


touched down in the land of the delta blues

by intrusive_plots



Category: Homestuck, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: A/A homosexuality, A/B/O typical abuse, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Heatfic, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Incest, Knotting, M/M, M/M/M, Mpreg, O/O homosexuality, POV Second Person, Pack Dynamics, Pheromones, Plot-heavy, Polyamory and Polygamy themes, Scent Marking, WIP, Work In Progress, Xenophilia, pregfic, slowburn, striderpine2019 - all striders all pining all the time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2019-10-03 12:29:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 118,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17284106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrusive_plots/pseuds/intrusive_plots
Summary: "The headlines call you Captain America's Battle-Meg, isn't that right?"You freeze your expression at the slang, a stony settle to your mouth and shoulders, animated warmth gone in a blink."Battle-what?"  The co-host teases, taking your side to recover the dead air.  "Meg - oh, hah, O'meg'a, right, that's what they used to, that's the old fashioned -"You shake your head, stand, long body unfolding out of the frame of the shot.  "That's not - I'm sorry, I don't agree with that language."  You fumble the mic from your shirt, your 'nope, no, that's not okay to say to anyone,' distant audio.  For a few suspended heartbeats the hosts keep their elbows up, eyebrows up, jaws loose, wide eyes tracking your circuit behind the cameras.A script shuffles, someone coughs to interrupt a furtively whispered debate.You return in-frame, doughnut in hand, and all but shove your face in Kathy Donnel's perfumed cleavage to clarify into her mic, audio feedback blistered by your breath as you turn your head to regard the audience over the rim of your aviators, "I prefer the term Battle-Bitch."





	1. A C T . I

### touched down in the land of the delta blues

> _What is between the star and the sea_  
>  _A bird as bright as a bird can be_  
>  _What is between the bird and me_  
>  _Only a star, only the sea_
> 
> \- The Waterboys

The boat isn't new – there are smears of rust down the bolt seams of the hull and the cabin smells like ten years of disuse, mildew soaked into dust, lemon cleanser soaked into linoleum cracks.  The bunkbed belowdecks is flat and lifeless, vinyl mattress-covers sun-cracked, support foam a springless brick under the dropped weight of your duffel.

Your name is ~~ISHMAEL~~ DAVE STRIDER, meta-human underground hero of Houston, disguised DJ celebrity, possible alien from actual outer space, and you are NINETEEN YEARS OLD when you take a plane to New York to join the Avengers.  A hospital bracelet is settled around your LEFT WRIST, soft plastic nearly glowing in the coastal sunset.  A Ninjatō rests in your RIGHT HAND, hard steel under old leather, a comforting weight. There's a SECRET growing inside you that's turned your scarred hide aglow in the high wind of the East Coast bay, but you don't know that yet.

The next year of your life will be built on the foundation of your ignorance, in fact, a never-ending pratfall down a flight of stairs constructed entirely of the fictions you've stacked up around your life and all its absurdities.  You try to send a text through your phone again, a furtive attempt at contacting your BRO that not even the **H** ousehold **A** uto- **L** ocutionist flags as 'read', responder offline - which is more worrying than even your own plight, if HAL's been silenced, or shut down, or worse.

You tuck your phone back in your jeans, crack your sword from its sheath just enough to wedge the base of the blade behind the boat's ignition plate, popping the panel off with a clean twist.  You tuck your sword under your arm and crouch to a knee, AVIATOR SHADES pushed up your forehead to better see the wires you're twisting to light the engine; you slap the pulley motor to life to unmoor the anchor, and rev the boat gently out of the wharf despite never having driven before, car nor boat nor anything.  

Intuitive hand-eye, that's what the labcoats had called it.

YOUR BROTHER could weave all sorts of mechanical parts into robots, golems from metal, a God breathing life into clay to answer its own loneliness.  Nobody taught him how.  Internet, he'd say, deadpan.

Internet, you would say, if they asked you how you learned to drive a boat, or knew where to stab the twelve-story-tall KRAKENESQUE currently molesting its way up the Statue of Liberty (though in a world of Tony Starks and Thor Odinsons, nobody would ask - sometimes people were just smart, had aptitudes, intuitions, sometimes people were just Gods).

The boat chops unevenly through a ragged upheaval of waves sent by the thrashing pile of murderfuck that had popped the rest of the way out of the ocean like the ocean was hot soup.  You, a verified NINJA OF THE MOST IRONIC ORDER, perform a FLASH-STEP off the boat to spare it from the choppy waters, the heels of your canvas chucks tapping on the crests of time-frozen waves, small pops of displaced air which startle THE HULK as you pass him on Liberty Island.

 _"Placing the charges, Cap, get that dinner plate ready,"_   Iron Man's augmented voice announces out of sight, the Avengers that had preceded you there already flanking the threat while you circle. You nearly abort mission, since there were PROFESSIONALS on the scene, but the job is half done before the consideration could cross your mind, the monster's massive arteries gouged open with each lightning-quick upswing of your blade.

When the PR Deputies retell the first time DAVE STRIDER meets THE AVENGERS, they'd clean it up, clean you up - you'd be dressed to impress, some lean european business-casual throw instead of the faded frat-rat chic, much less brackish green monster sputum smeared down your side.  You would do something cool like kick past Captain America's shield, all legs, maybe even knock a tentacle off-course just to prolong introductions, drop a one-liner, engage in some banter, flirt. It would be a real shounen cut-scene, stylized and rhythmic, fun and full of bolster.

The Avengers wouldn't know exactly what, or who they were looking at, but there would be a wary appreciation, an instant click of PACK DYNAMIC.  That's how it would get retold. 

_"Hey, who's the Backstreet Boy?"_   Iron Man barks as the monster slumps aside to reveal your perch on the Liberty Statue's tableau.  You can't hear the replies, but a few hands go up to a few ear pieces to secure a few estimates.   _"Nevermind,"_ Iron Man amends swiftly, approaching with an arm raised, pointing at the drowsily crooning monster now peeling itself from the green copper robes of the rescued damsel.  The monster's off-white skin visibly pales to a greenish grey as its blood foams the ocean into a violent Kool-Aid neon.  _"Was that -"_  Iron Man's mecha suit folds its facemask back, Stark nearing to speak at a normal volume.  "Was that you, Cochise?"

You nod, once, ankle crossed over knee, sword laid flat thigh to thigh, hands busy wicking the gore off the blade with a pumice.   You knew Tony Stark in professional passing, as a kid really, and you're startled to discover he is shorter than you now, if you took away the tech armor, because at nineteen you've stretched out tall and lanky, hewn from any trace of OMEGAN pliability by a lifetime vigil against the Tex-Mex hellportal problem.  You remember a man who was larger than life, dark eyes glittering with voracious intelligence, a cold glamour you used to want for yourself, for Bro.  You remember Stark smelled like woodsy bourbon, warm whiskey and clarified transmission oil, sandalwood or cedar or something. You remember a lot of things.

The Hulk's roar can be heard from there, his green mass bounding in and out of view to deliver one last completely unnecessary pile-drive.

Stark navigates a hover close enough to take a heavy clanging sit beside you, exhaling in relief as the helmet unfolds in whole, cold air hitting the sweat-damp back of his neck, stress evident in the salt of his musk. He doesn't smell like he used to, more metallic (for probably obvious reasons), less warm, less inviting.  "You didn't always look so hacked up, did you?"  he hazards, heavy armored hand weighing at your wan slump.

"Had a bad week," You lie evenly, a blithe disregard for the scars he's referencing, which have been around for years. It wasn't even entirely a lie - the past week had been hell on wheels.  You shift your weight to tug a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the back pocket of your cargo jeans, knocking the last free of its empty cardboard rumple.  "Got a light?"

"Your brother lets you smoke?"  Stark holds the palm of his armored hand up, propulsion port still hot from his flight.

You light a cigarette off Iron Man's plasma-engine palm, because this is your life now, still as completely ridiculous but with five new extra flavors of absurd.  You take a careful pull off your smoke and pinch a slow exhale past your teeth, then camp the brand in the corner of your mouth, return to cleaning your sword, pumice snagging viscera with long, scraping strokes.  "Guess he did at that.  Though I also guess he ain't the one in charge any more," you lead, eyebrows up, fingers barely tremoring, only maybe just from the cold.  This was the story that you were going to tell - that you were three years past a major tragedy, three years recovered, healthy, comfortable, functional, fine. The PR Deputies would be sure to confirm.  "But naw, it doesn't hurt us any, Boss.  We don't really 'do' cancer, as it turns out."

"You do papercuts?"  Stark teases darkly, swatting an armored knuckle at the sleeve of your baseball shirt.  "Death by a thousand origami cranes?  This all from that night gig you an' Brodie got up to?"

"It's a dangerous job," You drawl, agreeing, forearms criss-crossed with the pale scars of your trade, cleanly faded gash-lines decorating your throat, your jaw, cheeks, the bridge of your nose, a few nicks in each ear. "Somebody's gotta do it."  The worst of the scarring, well, that was under your clothing.  "And I ain't as fast as Bro, man, you know that."

Stark wheezes, shaking his head.  "We're uh, yeah.  We're gonna get you some armor."  He pushes off the tableau, suit engines peeling to life to catch his weight.  "Did you hop that thing to get yourself up here?"  He wags an arm at the dying seabeast.  "You're not stuck, are you?  Need me to get you to the stairs?"

It's the Omega he's addressing, not you, not your obvious skill and self-sufficiency, but the part of you that makes Alphas clamber rugby-pile style over each other to lay a jacket over a puddle, help you cross the street 'n shit.  You shake your head, cigarette cupped in your palm to keep the wind from extinguishing the cherry, and FLASH-STEP, a blur and a blink, made ghost, gone, shinobi-running down the grooves of the Statue's robes, somersault-tapping off the hard square lip of the base; a few monster-heaved hills of water later and you are back on the boat, breathing hard, shaking, shaking.

You steer the boat against the last of the ocean swells and tuck it into Liberty Island's ferry wharf with only a few inexpert collisions against the docking bumpers, then ease the engine down, off, finishing your smoke. You flick the last of the cigarette into the water as you moor the anchor, certain the small act of pollution was nothing compared to the sort of HEAVY METALS that would have to be in the GREEN BLOOD now freeflowing into the bay. Copper? Iron? Whatever it was, it smelled like nothing friendly to the ecosystem, alien or mutated or radiated or whatever that thing had been. 

Voices rise from the docks, civilians who hadn't been fast enough to evacuate to the ferries, who had taken shelter inside the Statue instead and were now surfacing; and the Avengers who were escorting those civilians to the emergency vehicles pulling up out of your view.  You lean a hip against the boat's steerage, arms crossed, and only tremble a little, maybe even only from the cold.  You have to wear the mantle of three years' recovery on shoulders that were barely a week past their wracking sobs; had to pull it off like you'd had plenty of time to grieve your loss, like you and your brother had graduated from three years of peace and not a recent week of inconclusive distress.

"You're going to want to take shelter," Stark advises, boat rocking under Iron Man's weight as he lands on the sunning deck.  "Charges were set on a timer, in case we couldn't detonate them with a manual strategy.  It's about to rain Oz."

You nod toward the boat's cabin, let Iron Man mecha-stomp his way in first, follow at a cautious distance, appropriately wary of an Alpha you haven't seen since you were, what, nine?

Stark steps out of the suit as soon as he is clear of the cabin door, a compactly built dark-haired man in track sweats damp with ocean, and his metallic scent up close is... unhealthy.  Sour.  Pallid or watered, like.  You relax in degrees, tug your duffel off the bottom bunk to let it fall to the floor with a muffled plap.  

Explosions sound off under the roiling surface of the ocean, jar the listing sway of the boat to a sharp dip, and you keep your feet by hooking your hands into the rafter piping, heels skidding over the chirp of wet linoleum. 

Stark just lets his body fold to a hard sit to the bottom bunk, grimacing.  "Go ahead and catch that door for me, Dueces."

You catch the door awkwardly with your foot, snagging its thick metal edge to tug it shut against the first stinking fall of guts, seawater, extremely offended fish smattering against the deck.

Stark sighs, scrubs both hands over his face and head, and sinks to his back to contemplate the inside of his eyelids while gore darkens the windows, lists the vessel.  "Your brother said you were, and I quote, 'real smart', that you'd work hard," he begins in an even lecture, half mumbling as if in conversation with himself.  "Which is _usually_ code for a Megan who is not exactly gifted in the department of physical appearance."  He flaps a hand out, draws lazy circles through the air, a figure eight to encompass you head to toe.  "I expected you to have a club foot, the way he was carrying on.  A lazy eye.  Dumbo ears, potbelly, something."  He struggles to his elbows, exhaling hard, studying you with a squint, and you're not one for OLD GUYS but the Omegan part of you wouldn't say no to making some pretty dark-lashed babies with those genes.

You settle back against the door, arms crossed, and shove your aviators more securely up your nose.

"I mean what _is it_ with people just forking up their wards, lately?"  Stark gripes, non-sequitur, addressing the fourth wall and the invisible audience in his head, probably. "I don't run that goddamn school, where is that school, Massachusetts?  Maine?  That _fucking school,_ that's where all you 'gifted' teenagers should end up, not my doorstep, mercy's sake."  He sucks a molar, wags his jaw.  Shakes his head.  "Anyway, you?  You're not the hunchbacked Brodie Jr. I was expecting.  Said you were funny and interviewed well _on radio,_  like _that's_ not code for a complete uggo."

You let your expression ease from its pinch of confusion.  "Yeah, I was told to expect a media-forward position not unlike the DeadMaus gig, seein' as Rogers is a national icon 'n all."

Stark's eyes narrow.  "Brodie said you were here for Steve, did he?"

Your mouth pulls back, nostrils flaring.  "Aren't I?"  You wouldn't say no, you goddamn wouldn't, but Tony Stark smells like seven avenues of distress and twelve stories of substance abuse and there's a glowing pocket of Nothing Good embedded in the center of his chest that you can't stare at for too long.

"Noh, yeah,"  Stark sinks back to the mattress again with a huff.  "Just, it 'isn't the way', knowing who your suitor is; not until, you know, Pack Intro.  In case there's a, what, a disapproval, or,"  Stark waves lazily through the air, wrist spun slowly, "Vie of competition.  Avoids hurt feelings."

You scoff under your breath, grip both elbows.  "We Striders are but simple Texan trailer trash, Mr. Stark, we can't afford feelings."  Quickly, furtive, "Are there other candidates I need to know about?"

" ** _A,_** you were raised in a swank metropolitan condo and it's gauche to pretend any different, and **B,** "  Stark pops his knuckles forward, testing the hollow ring of the bunking frame as he curls upright.  "Maybe. We didn't bring you on just to hang you out to dry if Steve makes up his mind not to do this; and while _I_  don't care if you want to observe the etiquette or not, please let's do _the Captain_ a solid by acting natural, like you're here for enrollment in our merry little band of misfits and not, uh, the mail-order Megan we've made of you."

"Rogers doesn't know."  You nod slow, exaggerated.  "Makes sense."  If Rogers _wanted_ a Meg he'd probably have one by now, and plenty of Governing Offices had tried to secure Broderick Strider's unmitigably Alpha ass on over to their payroll with a pre-packaged marriage proposal or twelve.  "Oh, uh, here," you bend at the knees to pull the flat allocator of your SYLLADEX from your duffel, logue your Ninjato in the STRIFE DECK, then toss it to Stark.  "Dowry.  Bro said you've had a bon-- uhh, I mean, you've had your eye on the skybaby tech for a while."

Stark hefts the sylladex in his palm. "Thanks."  He then underhands it back to you.  "But no thanks.  'Skaianet' tech, actually, and we've got this in SHIELD labs now, courtesy Agent Harley."

You try not to deflate in relief, and stuff your 'DEX into your back pocket to keep it close.

Professor (Agent?) Jade Harley, also fell from the sky the same year you fell, also as an infant later found alone and unharmed in the middle of a smoking crater with nothing but a diaper and a 'DEX; later to become a kid genius and then a boss-ass Alpha on an early graduation with ALL THE DEGREES. Her acquaintance was the first you had unearthed in the search for more of whatever it was you and Bro were supposed to be, before you met Egbert, even. She'd been working closely with Cutter's team to try and get the hellportal problem sorted, but the project had been kicked over to a Doctor Pym for its closing act.  Yeah, you knew Professor (Agent??) Harley, for a long time. "Pocket dimensions, man, How Do They Work."

You might have married Jade, with her skynation super-strength and all kinds of hells of intelligence; but she was still young, flighty and entirely absorbed in her work, unwilling to settle down any time soon.  That was the excuse, anyway, when you couldn't say that you were in love with someone else, had been squandering for time.  If you'd asked, Jade would have married you, and all of Grandpa Harley's Adventure Island money would have set the bid.

"Rogers knows, by the way,"  Stark says.  "Why you're here.  He just doesn't know that _you_ know, you know?"

"Need me in the dark so I won't put on airs?"  You dust at the side of your duds, damp and discolored with what monster leavings hadn't been wicked off by the dash down Lady Liberty.  "In case Rogers thinks I'm hamming it?"

Stark struggles to a stand, fingers hooked in the bottom of the top bunk to pull himself up, brown eyes warm with sympathy.  "No, we need you 'in the dark' in case Rogers doesn't want to do this.  He'd bond someone out of guilt, you know, or a sense of duty.  Almost has done just to polish his team's public relations, but the superhero lifestyle isn't exactly safe for civilians."  Stark's grip tightens, wrings a scuffing song from the bunk frame, fidgets a crumb of rust away.  "Believe it or not, I'm trying to find a setup that's actually _good_ for Cap, not just what can feed into his country-sized Martyr Complex."

You poke the lip of the Iron Suit's open chest cavity with a knuckle, watch the mecha sigh shut in clicks and whirs.  "Good thing I look about as far from a charity lay as Apollo's own bastard, then."  You crouch to your duffel again to rifle for a snack, to try and give the shiver in your hands something to still against.  "If Apollo had fucked Freddy Krueger."

"You look like a Hilton got fed through the wood chipper," Stark agrees seamlessly, and this whole conversation has gone about as smooth as a chat with one of Bro's AIs, like you share similar mental mapping, routes pre-ordained for snark.  Belatedly, you remember that Tony Stark is a genius.  Far more belatedly, you realize you might actually be something like a genius, too, professional musician by your tenth year of life and all.  Stark presents your persons with an upturned palm,  "I mean duh, 'gorgeous' if it had to go in a headline, but more uh, malnutrition vogue, tapeworm runway, coke-habit-chic. And you smell like calamari from a gas station in Utah."

You tilt your head, scratch your chin as you stand with a half-done bag of bacon jerky open in one hand. "Thanks. I don't do uppers and eat my weight in burritos at least three times a day." Then, because turnabout is fair play, you jaw around a mouthful of jerky, "You smell like hot garbage from the business end of an ambulance."

"I was on death's doorstep like a week ago, so, points." Stark peers past his empty suit to the wide cabin windows, where the blur of a figure in blue and white moves past the gore-clouded glass alongside a smaller blur of black.  "Hey come take a seat, will you." Stark shuffles out of the way to let you fold your lanky ass down onto the bed, trading places at the door.

"Okay who is the organ donor who -"  A woman's demand precedes the opening of that door, but Stark blocks her entrance, shoves forward, pulls the door hastily shut after himself, leaving you alone with Iron Man's silent exoskeleton and the lingering waft of the seabeast you'd slain, mingled with Tony Stark's week-past blood poisoning.


	2. I : II

Your name is DAVE STRIDER and you are FIVE YEARS OLD when you learn how to count, and discover that the sum of your BRO's fingers - that's thumbs and all - only total four to a hand, four toes on each foot, and everybody else _in the world_  has five (sometimes six).  Bro's hands are long and bony and rough, and he wears a pair of black biking gloves to hold prosthetic pinky-fingers on, which stick out hilariously like he is taking high tea whenever he grips anything, until their revisions and eventual bio-mechanical upgrade.  Gloves on, his hands look bigger than they are, which makes the rest of him look smaller than he is, a useful deception.

You are maybe TEN YEARS OLD, taller than most Betas or Omegas of that age already, certainly more athletic, when Brodie's rooftop training regimen steps it up a notch. You bitch to your forums and your online friends about the extra bruises but never complain out loud, emulating Bro's stoicism.  This is the year you will find out what it is Bro does for a living, underground both metaphorically and literal.  This is the year you will join him.

You are THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, taller than most Alphas of that age even, when the rooftop regimen steps back down several notches, and you notice, and you drop your blocks as often as Bro softens his attacks, which gets you hurt, gets you scuffed up.  Sometimes you fight doubly hard, just to see if Bro is faking you out ironically, and you actually land a hit or three, and Bro will chuff a congratulation each, which will enrage you the way condescension would enrage any subordinate Alpha, and you eventually figure maybe this is part of the training, too, the sheer mindfuck, the fakeouts and the gentle encouragement, Stockholm syndrome rooftop Padawan edition.

This is the year you have a fight with a classmate in the middle of the grey Texan winter, and it doesn't come to blows because you know better, you hide emotion well and you reign your anger in, the first skillset you were ever given and it's your best skillset, staying calm, acting normal and stupid and immature.  But you are genuinely upset when your friend calls you an asshole, and the tears gathering under your prescription-tint glasses are real and heavy and hot and taste thicker than usual, somehow, laden with hormones to beseech mercy from whatever threat brought them on. 

Before thirteen, your tears were ever only the sour salt-sweat of injury, a physiological response to pain or frustration, tangy with aggression.  After thirteen, your tears would be heady and full and fat with appeal and you would grow unable to hold them in.

You walk out of school early without so much as a visit to the nurse, and you return home scrubbing at your eyes, stomach heavy and oddly tight, even though you've already forgotten the argument, already forgotten who you argued _with._  

Bro makes a sound from the kitchen when you walk in, and for a startled heartbeat you think there's a stranger in the house, because Bro has _never_ made a sound like that before, that low nasal grunt of curios concern - Bro is rarely curious, he always just _knows_ shit, and he is _never_ concerned.  He steps in front of you as the apartment door shuts, mops your shades from your face with his whole bare-ass hand, pulls your head against his ribs and pushes his wrist behind your ear for an unexpected Household Greeting and you 

_shove -_

because this is bullshit, this is make-believe, this is some head game, so you punch and thrash and struggle to pull free of the hug, you bite and wrestle and cuss and collapse all to bits, giant fucking Ghibli tears and hyped-up breathless sobs.

The lie will go something like this: that by the time you are sixteen you'll have gotten in trouble with an Alpha, pregnant or spurned or whatever.  Bro will kill that Alpha, you'll be heartsick, you'll have three years to get over your shit, time to process, time to fatten the salary of a psychologist or seven.  There's holes in the story, of course, which will be filled in with ever-more lies, until those, too, are dispelled.

The [Matryoshka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll) striptease of that fiction will insist that Brodie's trespass against you was never this; that you were sixteen, and you and Brodie were isolated on a boat in the middle of the ocean, or you were both trapped in a hell portal that had collapsed behind you, or had been sent to a prison planet to share the same tiny cell, you'll be sixteen and sick with heat and Bro will be stunned or injured or Rooding, and it won't be anybody's fault when he fucks you, when he does you that favor, and you'll have three years together to pass, your sixteen to nineteen, to get over it, or to keep doing it, depending on who is listening to what iteration of the fiction, peeling the Russian shawl off of which dark-haired bride.

The smallest hidden doll of truth, the blue individual under all those red-hooded Matryoshka ladies, is that you are thirteen when you pull deep hungry breaths against the warm hill of Broderick's ribs, arms clung around his waist, palms damp against the fistfuls of thin white wifebeater you'd gathered as if you were going to Sumo-toss the stone shithouse Brodie has made of himself, as if you could.  You are thirteen and taller than most Alphas your age when you present as Omega, though the hints had been tugging at Bro's suspicions for the past year. Your stomach is heavy and your knees are wobbly and your face is wet and you're dizzy, over-oxygenated, smothered into complacency by the gear-oil dudefunk of the Head of your Household. 

Shivering down the trunk of yourself, shoulders to hips, you grunt a question and tilt your head up to seek an answer, nose and chin buried in the valley of the side of Bro's pectoral to try and taste the [umami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami) of him, because you've got a fever, you're shaken and sick and home from school over it. Bro grunts similarly in reply, a confession of his own doubt, and he slides one long, four-fingered hand down your back and under the hem of your uniform slacks, stooping to press his middle finger flush along your asscrack. It aches a little when that finger splits you open dry and you hiss against the cradle of Bro's armpit, knees dipping forward; your guts unclench in a hard spasm and you slick around Bro's fingertip, taking him in to the knuckle, breath knocked void from your lungs, solar plexus bricked by a shivering knot of pleasure.

Your body has only ever been a weapon, a vessel to ferry thought into physical form, an organic machine that only needed upkeep, repair every now and again, fuel and rest and regular stretches; and now the engine of you has switched into a gear you didn't know you even had, and your only passing resentment is that Bro's patronizing rooftop gentility had a point after all.  Otherwise, you're cool; you're not mad and you're not ashamed and later you'll even be a little bit proud of the contradiction.  An Omegan who can fight.  A murdermeg.  Heh.

"Pedo," you hiccough as soon as your breath returns, and the ribs under your cheek and ear hitch with a scoff. Your arms are loose and noodly and your legs are strung tense and tight and every hinge of yourself is damp and this is nothing like clinging to another Dave under the covers in the early morning dark but you're good for it anyway, pressing a half chub against the top of Bro's thigh as he lets his leg take your weight, that new heat under your guts dribbling down behind your nutsack and seeping into your underwear.

"You wish," Bro deadpans, lazy, and he's right, his smell hasn't changed from its dry tobacco mood-stasis and he's not hard in his jeans but he _is_ half about to finger-fuck you right there in the foyer, so.

The Matryoshka choir will say it was never this deliberate, that Bro was as much a victim of his own biology as you were, that you weren't just a tool that needed some upkeep, that he cared about you and ~~only wanted to help~~ needed to alleviate a literal life-threatening onslaught of Heat (and you'll be sixteen, and). That one little off-key blue individual will keep the truth of it, that Brodie saw a problem and took the easiest fix, and he didn't necessarily care whether or not you were okay with it, or what other people might accuse him of, if the rooftop ass-kickings in full satellite view were any clue.

It's a stand-off for a few breaths, glued to Brodie's side with your heartbeat in your toes and you realize that Bro is thinking, that he's been surprised badly enough to stall, maybe, because he'd made that noise in the kitchen, that soft exhale of a question, might have had his guard thrown for once.  

"At least buy a bitch dinner first, damn," you mutter, chin digging into Bro's pectoral, trying to catch a glimpse of his expression, a clue.

Bro's finger eases out of you, hand lingering against your ass in a brace. "This doesn't make you a bitch, D," he says with that gentility that you hate so fucking much, but you suck in a breath and you nod, not about to argue against your own dignity.  Bro looks down at last, considers you for a cool minute, pulls his hand out of your pants with a drag of slick up your asscrack that jerks a flinch through your knees.  "Gotta call the school.  Get you on the Registry."

You grimace, because no school just means more training, more trips underground, less time with your friends.  "Not accepting flowers from anyone under the 27th tax bracket, so put that on my profile.  High rollers only."  You tighten your grip around Brodie's waist, the moment precarious.

Bro's hand had settled over the small of your back, the damp of your slick soaking through your uniform shirt, and the smell slowly blooming into the apartment is all you, your apple and your cotton and your record vinyl and more of something else, somehow, and you press your face back into Brodie's taut chest to try and smother your own smell out of your own nose.  Your asshole is clenching, oozing, a raw ache spreading down the inside of your thighs, and when you tell this story you'll say you were sixteen, and desperate, and the safety of your brother's custody could no longer suppress the autosomally inevitable, and Brodie would have been more of a monster if he _hadn't_ fucked you stupid, and so on.

But you're thirteen the night you climb into Bro's futon to mash your warm face against the side of his ribs, sliding close under the sheets, naked and shower-damp.  A warm tension is running its circuit from the inside of your thighs up to the deep scar of your belly button, and you act with the confidence that Bro's usual method of rejection couldn't possibly hurt any worse than the hell you've already been through, dueling para-terrestrial nightmares together in the dark.

Brodie doesn't kick you out, doesn't banish you back to the cold isolation of your own room.  He grunts a token complaint before opening his arm to let you plaster yourself against his ribs, large dry hand settling over the curve of your rump to curl his fingertips down in the wet heat just behind your balls.

You hike your knee over the hard hill of Bro's thigh to open yourself up, and snuffle impatiently against the malty orange of his skin, mouth falling open to steal a taste, and there is no excuse for this, no manual to consort for two packless aliens wandering against each other in the dark. 

Brodie tastes like  _home_ and _sleep,_  but everything that is spun tight inside of you won't calm against him, because he also smells like the Alpha you've been trained to fight your whole life, like  _tension_  and  _wariness_ and the leftover memory of  _pain._   The sweat-softened hair of his underarm brushes the top of your nose and you wedge your face down between his skin and the bed, huffing at the unfairness of your life.  You were a Megan, sure, but even if the rooftop showdowns ran a little gentler, that didn't mean you could goddamn relax.

You briefly entertain the idea that you and Bro aren't even related, for how different you are - all ten of your fingers, all ten of your toes.

But no, you Striders were the skybabies who showed up preloaded with leucism and skeletal deformations, Insta-Geniuses Shake'n'Baked in with the right amount of Fucking Insane.  Your teeth are just a millimeter too broad compared to most, wide muppet mouths the both you, Brodie's incisors crowded forward half nested on his eye teeth, because his face is longer than yours, more wolfish, and he's huge like an Asgardian (you're not Asgardian, you don't think), and you're huge for a 'Meg, and you are both the same kind of something, you and Bro, which is the only bad thing about you two fucking around, maybe, but fucking around is also the only good thing about being the same kind of something as Broderick Psycho-Sensei Strider.

So whatever, it's whatever, your relationship with Brodie was always going to be a respectful array of misery and strain, an artfully assembled sampling platter of endless bouts of violence, but suddenly there's this interruption, now, this physical reprieve you're taking advantage of as the opportunity presents, this goddamn endorphin fixer that cements your love to Broderick's possession like gravity drags the Earth around the sun to promise a return out of the dark.

Bro's fingertip breaches a little further into the clench of your ass with each drowsy breath, and that tension inside you only spreads, sinks its hooks into the top of your thighs and the back of your elbows, an itch to move scrawling up your back, down your hips.  You exhale as silently as possible, and your mouth feels full of your own tongue, face still puffy with emotion.  Bro's finger drags out, stealing your breath, then in again, deeper, curling, pressing sideways into your slicking gland, which punches a  _noise_ past your chest, a high sweetened call you've heard in some of the lustier R&B songs before your time - and you  _move,_ an indelicate hitch of your narrow hips that you can't stop once it starts.

Brodie stills, but you can't follow his example, can't slow down, another Megan call pulled through you like silk out of a sleeve.  Your ass clenches hard around Brodie's finger and you push up from the bed, alarmed, dizzy, elbows knocking against your ribs in their wobble to try and support your weight.

Bro always seems so monstrously large compared to other people, but here in the dark of his bedroom you can only measure what you can touch, and he is reduced down to a mapping palmful of skin, a collection of breaths, an idea and a suggestion of a person rather than a sighted whole, and he doesn't feel so gigantic laying so prone under the squirm of your orgasm.

You come against Brodie's thigh, a weak thread of seed that smells more like your slick than the expected salt.  Your knee hikes a little further across Brodie's waist, tugging you to a loose and lazy straddle, blood ringing through your ears as you tip forward, shove your numb hands down to paw at the rough line of Bro's pubic trail, chest hitching against his and shoulder curled forward to pillow your cheek.  Brodie's breath brushes through your bangs and batters your eyelashes and you scrunch yourself down further to reach his cock, teeth chattering with how hard your diaphragm spasms in want, slick dribbling out of you to hit the bed with an audible patter.

You hear a hiss, the wet click of Brodie biting the side of his finger open.  "D," he admonishes, because you're not really allowed to lay hands on, not in the name of even shallower affection so especially not like this, and you know better.  And then Bro slides his blood-wet finger in past the aching clench of your anus and the hormones in him seep past the hormones in you and the line of tension in you is cut, snapped, a guitar string tuned too hot.

"Hanh," you gasp, deflating boneless atop the wide planes of Bro's chest, the fine white hair of him prickling against your cheek.  The story you tell yourself is that this is a Heat - and it's not, but you won't know that until much, much later; and the story you'll tell others is that you were sixteen, and Brodie had no choice, and.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **THIS STORY IS A WORK IN PROGRESS,** which means the chapters are posted as rough draughts and later edited, rearranged or deleted. Please wait until the WIP tag is removed if you'd prefer to avoid some confusion.
> 
>  **COMMENTS ARE DISABLED** until the final draught, but still show in my inbox - questions will be answered in the following chapter notes.


	3. I : III

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, and you are NINETEEN YEARS OLD the day you join the Avengers in New York to put a slap on a fantastic beast attacking (romancing?) the Statue of Liberty.

You're waiting in the bow of the STOLEN BOAT for your new custodial family to make up their minds on rank, and change yourself into a dry pair of jeans that ride a little high at the ankle and a little low at the waist, and a T-Shirt with the Turntech Godhead logo, from your first tour out to California. You're shrugging an arm into the red zip hoodie you bought at the airport amenities, which is fleecy and thick and smells like department store detergent, when THE BLACK WIDOW follows Stark's abrupt arrival through the flimsy metal door. You fold back into a sit on the cabin's bottom bunk, hitting your elbow against a metal bedpost in the attempt to navigate the remaining hoodie sleeve.

"Are you actually DeadMaus?" Stark pelts in his quiet mumble as he shuts the door after THE BLACK WIDOW, who joins you near the bunk.

You shake your head no, "Quickest reference to my dayjob, is all. Masked identity, a performance brand that can travel on different shoulders if I can't make a tour, that kinda thing."

Widow reaches in your sleeve to help pull your arm through, and folds your hand over to scent your wrist - which makes the bridge of your nose flush hot. You know, somewhere in your collective of nightly news facts, that Black Widow is an Omega, and Omegas are always up for grabs, for comfort or direction, but especially by other Megs - one of the few perks of your station. Widow smiles, a flat and practiced expression that you're used to slapping on your own face, and she relents your arm to offer her own, freesia over gunmetal. She is shorter than you had assumed from her television appearances, athletic and curved, a preternatural beauty to the pale of her skin and vibrancy of her hair, and you can't imagine that she was five minutes fresh out of the same tussle with that seabeast as the rest of you, as composed as she was.

You let your jaw loosen and hang your mouth open over the Widow's pale wrist spanned between black glove and kevlar sleeve, but you don't inhale too deep. The bunk dips with the weight of the Black Widow's kneel, just as the boat's engine growls to life and you startle, catching a glimpse of the broad-shouldered smear of blue and white stood at the wheel outside, beside a shorter crumple of black who has unwisely leaned back against the gore-clouded glass of the cabin window. 

Widow kneels on the bunk beside you, and her wrists pass behind your ears and she tuts, tugs your shades free, and you can feel the shake of yourself at the loss of your mask, wide-eyed with wet building under your tongue. You're not a kid anymore. You're not. You _know_ how to do this, you've done it dozens, hundreds of times with your production team, with fans, with _friends_ -

"One half of Joy Division?" Stark hazards, braced against the cabin door as the boat turns out of the wharf.

"Pretty sure they're French," you rasp, and feel the chuckle stick in your throat. You are literally wearing the merch to your act, but whatever, your team was never Joy-Division-big and home office DJs like you were a dime a dozen on any coast. "Hi," you finally manage, to Black Widow. "Sorry. Jetlag. I'm Dave." You push your sleeves up, pass your wrists over Widow's shoulders, deference, but the battle won't leave you, won't turn your applewood sweet or let the cotton through the metallic notes of blood.

"Anthony doesn't Introduce, either," Widow assures with a shrug. "Natasha Romanov. You can call me Natalie, if you like."

You wince, because she's using the Therapy Voice and you're mortified by the type of FIRST IMPRESSION you're making to engender such immediate notes of sympathy.

Stark can't stop glancing at you, up and down, cheek hollowed in as he bites the corner of his mouth. 

"This boat is stolen," you calmly admit, instead of any number of excuses rabbiting around to try and explain your damage.

"We'll trace the license," Natalie says, easing back to scoot behind you, laying out on her stomach, as naturally gifted a lounger as a cat. "Compensation will be logged with the rest, since most of the boats in the bleed radius are going to be impounded against the possibility of biohazard."

The business talk is relaxing, as is having Natalie stretched prone behind you, for some reason you're still a little too gobsmacked to investigate too close, the sun through the clouded windows stretching up to warm your elbow as the boat turns wide, heads south. Natalie smells null, you realize late. Like John on his inhibitors, closer to the comfort of Beta neutrality than that doughy Omegan head, and maybe that makes sense, doing the job she does, made Pack with her colleagues as she was. Your stomach flips a little when Stark moves from the door, and Natalie behind you lets out a low 'hey' to warn him.

"Just sending the goods back to the tower," Stark defends, pressing the seams of the Iron Man suit open. He steps backwards into the mecha's embrace, and winks at you just before the mask closes over.

"It's not a tower," Natalie sighs as Iron Man taps the cabin door shut after himself. Nat plucks her gloves off, works her fingers, cracks her knuckles and digs lint out from under a fingernail. "We rebuilt north of the city proper, underground. Safer, less conspicuous."

"Easier to defend," you guess as the suit engines roar off into the distance, Stark's shadow joining the other two at the helm, and you twist to join Widow in repose, belly-up as she shuffles aside to make room. You settle side to side, as small as the bunk is and as cold as the cabin, Natalie on her belly and you on your back. You cross your hands over your stomach, guarding a too-new scar, and fidget with the soft plastic of your medical bracelets. "What am I doing here, Natalie," you drawl, trying at world-weary exasperation.

"Was hoping you could tell me," Natalie volleys, dry, her voice cracked under with a pleasant weathering, good for audio, good for jockeying, for radio. "They said to expect a ground agent, brought in from the cold. That means freelance, usually, but can allude to defection. You've got a file, but it's thin."

You scoff, fish your sunglasses out of the space between your heads, settle them back over your budding stress migraine. You wouldn't have considered yourself an Agent, necessarily, but the label was the closest fit for the job you did, and who paid your rent to do it.

Natalie continues, "I was brought in from the cold, but I wasn't freelance and I hadn't defected. The organisation who trained me was on the wrong side of history, and SHIELD didn't want to waste any perfectly good field agents on any wars of contrition." She shifts her weight, elbow to elbow, mattress squeaking under gore-damp armor. "So they brought me in, and they gave me a job, but the rest was up to me. 'In from the cold', means there's some warming-up to get done. Probably always will be." Natalie's booted heel wags over, knocking the top of your shoe. 

You tug your arms over your middle, cross them a little tighter, jaw clenched against a shiver. "I feel like I read that on the back of your bubblegum card," you say, because what else can you do but joke, and nudge back at your new BestFriend. "But seriously, my 'Meg's name is John Egbert and if I didn't have this job to do with y'all then me and my hundreds of career dropout dollars would be in DC pretending to make little overpowered Striderberts with _him,_ so."

Natalie scoffs. "You can bring your Meg up from DC, Dave, this isn't an exclusive bower." Her hand begins the casual grooming loop, from the back of your ear to your neck to your shoulder and across, and out, and in again, and you'll smell a little more like her for it, a little calmer and a little null. "Anthony has his wife, and his chauffeur for that matter, and Peter sometimes stays over with his aunt. There is plenty of room for you, your Pack, and all hundred career dollars."

You take a moment to just breathe, marinading in this strange new heart-clench melancholy. You can't bring your whole Pack, not really. You don't think John has ever even met Bro face to face, and even if Brodie ever set aside his Rugged American Individualism to join you, John would definitely have some problems with the brother-fucking. Rose might not care (in her cold, detached, unfazed ultra-Alpha way) but she had a life and career of her own, plus that whole spooky reticence toward governmental conformity; and Jade didn't sound at all ready to settle down into any kind of hierarchy at this point in her life but especially not with a Pack full of strangers, just because your dumb ass got forked over.

Natalie shifts to better regard you. "What does the back of your bubblegum card say? Those scars are too smooth and uniform for the claws of _A. Cronus Estradi_." 

You take a breath and this is easy, this is the easiest thing to admit, this is routine, this is old news dulled by years of the retelling. "Dave Strider, possible alien fallen out of the sky; found, raised and trained by similar possible alien who also fell out of the sky; grew up Doing that whole To-Do down in Houston, interdimensional gatekeeping, and yeah Bro didn't pull his punches when he trained me up, if by punches we mean stabs."

Natalie hums, satisfied of the answer but doubtful of the levity with which you delivered the confession that most of your marks could legally be considered domestic abuse. "So what are you doing here, Dave?"

"My best," you answer, and it's easier to say. "I'm doing my best."

Natalie wags her foot, tapping yours. "What are you doing _here,_ with us. Why did Stark and Rogers unanimously agree to bring you in when they can't hardly agree on lunch, and are we to expect any follow-through from Houston?"

"Is my brother going to come visit me, or enlist?" you finish, and swallow back your bitter chuckle.

Natalie sighs into your hair, a silent invite.

You wrack your muddled thoughts for the story you were supposed to tell, as the ocean chops evenly against the hull, the boat hitting open water at high speed. "I don't know Brodie's plans." You want Natalie's suspicions to be warranted, even: you want Bro to so covet your company as to submit himself to an officiating authority, just like he did with the State of Texas so you could have a social security number, could be brought up under a House, in his tutelage. "Definitely ain't gonna _join me,_ not with his history."

"Remind me," Natalie says.

You sigh in through your nose. "Besides the anti-authoritarianism after he broke free from a research lab?" Because those assaults were public record, and also exonerated on a self-defense charge. "Bro got in some hair with another Alpha, about three years back. Killed the guy, got himself indicted," you lie, and it's a believable lie just for the sake of filling in some Striderian mystery, putting a personality to a public servant who had come off more a blank slate, urban legend. You crack your knuckles, a soft crunch. "And really, I mean, I couldn't blame him for going after the guy like that, for my sake. I was mad, yeah, but I was also _sixteen,_ and therefore an idiot, so." You sigh. You hate this, despite how easy, how believable. It's such a common, boring story, and doesn't touch on a fraction of what you had between you and Bro, as Striders, the isolation and the hell-strife and the burning resolve to shelter your humanity between you, carry it like a third sibling, take your humanity out for lunch and back to bed, read it philosophy and make sure it got out to socialize. 

Brodie wasn't half as humane as you, sure, exhibits A through Z being your entire fucking childhood; but it took a great deal of humanity to go through what he went through and not torch the entire goddamn state and the next three bordering for the offense.

"So, what _I'm_ doing here, I don't know yet," you lie, you lie, you lie - and not just at Stark's request, but because it's so much easier to play dumb. "Bro has been fishing for a custody situation that could keep me out of trouble, put me to use, keep the gub'ment out of my hair, out of _his_ hair. And I guess Stark bit?"

Natalie grunts softly, a snag in her expectations - "Your brother put you up on a work contract?"

You hum, uncertain. Would you know as much, if he had? "I know he put me in the Widow Auction. Kinda literally, since he killed Tim." You smile against Natalie's kevlar, shift your weight to more comfortably cradle your ribs against hers. "John's dad almost took me in for an oldfashioned custody marriage, but I knew John would have thrown a house at me for it."

"So Anthony actually did bring you in on a custody merit? He didn't contract you in for Avenging first, custody a necessary incidental?"

"Pretty sure, yeah." You uncurl a bit to puzzle at the small crease between Natalie's brows. "I'm still getting paid to be here, to fit some group-cohesion role either way. I just file the paycheck under household stipend instead of a salary, is all. I mean I guess I don't doubt there's some sorta tax chicanery going down in all of that, but whatevs. Why?" 

Natalie shrugs, dismissing her own confusion. "If Anthony took your bid from the Auction, then chances are you're here for that arrangement. If he wanted to hire you, he would have just hired you."

You let that deduction lance through you, hot-cold, and only lose your breath a little. Bro could have kept custody. Of course he could have, there was no feasible way for the State to take you from him, no martial measure either of you couldn't breeze the fuck past, no jail to hold you. "That's probably how that works, yeah." The shakes pounce, jittering a sharp suck of breath past your teeth. You didn't have a choice but to show up, to join, to agree to your mission. The only other Pack you wanted was holding himself hostage; even if you could fuck off to Jade's or make an appeal to Rose that was no promise you'd ever see Bro again, the petty shit-hike. 

The crease between Natalie's brows fades, then reappears as she watches you segregate a little space for yourself on the bed. "Did he at least walk you to the departure gate? Your brother?"

Miserably, you slide back, all the way off the bed, a dull thud of your hip meeting the cold grit of damp linoleum, shoulder and elbow to follow. "'Course not," you rasp, a limp pathetic bundle of bones, shaking, shaking. 

"I can't smell him, is what I mean," Natalie finishes evenly, merciful in her stay atop the bed, out of sight. "He sent you off alone, and didn't scent you first. Doesn't seem keeping with someone who would commit murder over you, unless there's been some sort of falling out to interrupt the routine, in which case we need to know if Houston is going to make a visit."

And shit, she had you there. You dry up pretty fast, self-pity trading places with dread. The boat is slowing, turning gently, daylight shifting its angle through the smeared windows. Brodie didn't scent you because Brodie fucked off about half a month ago, said if you didn't get your fag-ass on over to the east coast and do what you were told, he'd sell his body to science. "I think he didn't want to offend the House I was leaving to join," you hazard, picturesque chill, and tug your phone out of your pocket, typing another text that Brodie's auto-responder can't or won't even read. "We don't gotta expect no consolation visit. He knows I can take care of myself."

"Does he know that it's destabilizing, to cut a Megan adrift like that? Anthony couldn't have met you in Texas, brought you back here with him?"

"I'm not _not_ stable," you mutter, rubbing the back of your knuckle under the warm wet of your eyes. "I've been on my own before."

Natalie's report is sharp, impersonal. "You're on the floor, Dave. You can't say five words without shaking apart at the seams. You nearly puddled when I took your wrist - you know that's a fear response, right?"

Your insides curdle and you can't even tell Natalie to shut up, because it's not like this is Jade or Rose handing you your own ass, this is a certified Professional of several Professions laying down some Professional counsel, Meg to Meg. "I miss my brother, yeah," you excuse woodenly, instead. "I think if Stark had shown up in Houston to take me over proper, there would have been a fight," you lie, and it's an easy fit to Natalie's implication that an unannounced visit would mean a problem with the other Alphas of the Pack - not over you, just over the usual posture of rank, Brodie being enrolled on the violent criminal list 'n all. "I don't think Bro can turn it off. I think we've been fighting really ugly things side by side for too long, for him to just turn that off." Then, inspired, "My Alpha didn't do anything wrong, back when Bro went apeshit." You lie, you lie, you lie. "Tim might not have done anything right, exactly, but he didn't need to die, not like that. Bro could have just laid custody down and gone home, but he didn't, he fuckin' savaged the dude." 

You force your voice small, ears straining at the boat motor's slowing trawl, at the voices and footfall outside the cabin. "Nobody taught Brodie how to reign that in, I guess, no Pack to regulate him. Just him and me, and the civil service receipts."

Comprehension lightens Natalie's next conclusion, "If Broderick fell under feral status even once, that's an automatic disbar from field work, which explains why Stark hasn't brought him in with you."

You swallow and your throat audibly clicks. Broderick was the least feral, in fact, but especially given his origins. He could have smoked this whole planet for the transgression of his capture, the impersonal medical nature by which he'd been tortured, but he didn't. Could have claimed a landshare of Omegas for himself, built a support crew of Betas, made generals of Alphas, could have fucked off to Alaska or Australia or Tibet or something to become a Mecha Baron, but chose to play punk in a two-bedroom in Texas, with the least feral show of restraint, of higher thought, of humility. He chose to follow the law and help protect the innocent and he chose to raise you and train you up, teach you manners and generosity and humility; and you might have thought he was evil, at one point, evil and psycho and just lazy about it, but you never thought he was wild or unhinged or anything but 100% in control of all situations at all times.

"That's the short and long of it, yeah," you lie, "Too much of the crazy, even for as well as he trained himself, trained me." You nod, though Natalie can't see it. "I, however, am what they might call 'over-domesticated'. Made me learn how to talk pretty and ev-uh-ry-thang."

Natalie scoffs, and swings her boots over the edge of the bunk, stepping carefully over you, pulling herself to a stand. "You had a routine, I bet. And now you're off your routine, and it's rattled you."

You curl tighter in on yourself, bundle of sticks in a red sack hoodie, and nod. "Didn't think it would fuck me up this bad, switching gears." Because you really had lived in routine, now that you think on it - your shows were all slotted for the weekends of spring and winter break your target audience would be on to enjoy them, and hellportal excursions were frequent enough to count as rote. Bro's training regimen was definitely clockwork, and you took your meals at a schedule to suit your metabolisms, which were, _are_ massive. The two weeks you'd spent stagnating in your own panic had drained you down to a shell, robbed of routine and Household cohesion.

Natalie's hand drapes down from her crouch, thumps you on the arm. "None of that routine took place on the floor, Longshanks. Let's go."

"'Weep into the kitchen linoleum' was my Friday afternoon for like these last three years, babe." But you take her hand and let her pull you up and only wobble a little. "And Bro was _always_ knocking my ass to the ground, who are you kidding."

Brushing you down in slapping sweeps, Natalie smiles, grim. "But I bet he never let you stay down." She helps you stuff your gut-soaked clothes into your duffel, slings the bag over her own shoulder, braces the back of your arm in a steadying grip as the boat docks somewhere empty of other boats and quiet of city noise. "I plan to behave as if you really are just a new contract brought in from the cold, and your Meganhood will be treated as circumstantial as your height, useful to our House but of no necessity to your role in the Avengers."

Your pokerface does not betray you, because you too are a professional. "Maybe you should ask Stark about that, since he's got a whole cast program on who is supposed to know what." The footfall and voices outside drift, disappear, boat rocking a bit as weight leaves it. 

"Dave," Widow prompts, and it is Widow and not Natalie, and she is speaking to you as a Professional, one stabbity weaponized bundle of Omegan contradiction to another. "Do you know why you're here?"

And, because you respect Natalie, and because Stark really only suggested you keep this secret from Rogers, who knows, but doesn't know that you know, "Publicity stunt like this wouldn't go too well, if I knew why I was _actually_ here. Sands the patine off the meet-cute exclusive, if they know I'm signed to catch aggro for Captain America, settle his ass down a little, give Stark some leverage maybe, since it's Stark's custody." Your sword click-pops into your hand, SYLLADEX flipping from strife modus to captchalogue in your pocket. "Gotta sound kinda incidental, don't it? Me, being Megan? Doing what I do, what I can do, helping you all _Avenge,_ 'n that." 

You rest the sword over your shoulder, hand loose around the pommel, and all that awful squirming misery relents its tension from your bones. Your shakes abide. Your posture liquefies. Your bro might as well be standing behind you, mission-ready. "I'm here to smile for the cameras, get a feature-friendly wedding funded, bear Cap's Uber-Kinder, and look hella surprised about it all. Sorry I called you babe."

Natalie nods, thoughtful. "Sorry I made you cry. Thanks, for the information; and thank you for your honesty."

"Thanks for the cuddle."

"Anytime." Natalie drops your arm, chuffs the small of your back, short circular rubs. "Would have been easier to just hire you, let the natural order of things play itself out. No selling required."

"Brodie told me," you deadpan, not so certain you would have capitulated to a courtship without his say-so. Brodie told you in no uncertain terms that you were moving on from him, and it broke you apart. "And then Stark told me to act dumb, because Rogers heard 'arranged marriage' and gave a hard maybe. Stark didn't want my awareness to pressure Captain Guilt-trip into anything, I guess?"

"Tony doesn't want Steve to know, that _you know_ why you're here," Natalie surmises, then shakes her head. "That's a bit convoluted, but I suppose I see his point."

You query, eyebrows above shades.

Natalie nods at the door. "Steve's an oldfashioned guy, he would want to let you make up your mind."

Which was, okay, maybe kind of a shitty waste of good intentions, because it wasn't like _you_ had _options._ "Hn. Stark told me he just wanted to give Rogers an Out, in case this wasn't the best thing for him."

"Oh," Natalie laughs, a long, low, dark chuckle that makes your chest tight. "Steve can't ever be the one who needs fixing, or help, he always has to be the fixer, who helps."

You test the heavy rusted scrape of the cabin door, peer outside, then step past and hold it open for your new #1 murderbabe BFF. "I can't help but feel a little insulted by that, ma'am," Except you know the story Bro would have told Stark, what kind of image that would have painted, that you were dusted up, shattered, needed some rescuing. How not-entirely-untrue that might be, now. 

You step from boat to dock, an agile hop that Widow mirrors flawlessly in time, red chuck and black murderboot hitting wood in tandem. "Don't really need fixing, or help. Had a fleet of mental health professionals for that, and they cleared me for celebrity marriage and everything," you lie, you lie, you lie; and you don't even know if the paperwork exists to back to you up. You turn to walk backwards, facing Nat, but you crane your chin over your shoulder to the small road you're approaching off the dock and through the shoreline trees, the handful of Avengers who had preceded you now heard, scented. 

"Exactly," Natalie continues, "You're used to this life, and your documented invulnerability takes a lot of the pressure off Rogers to do any saving of his own. He might be able to relax a little, put Captain America down, just be Steve." Her wrists ease up, forward, behind your ears and against your neck, and it feels like she's drawn a hood over you, softened sounds and dampened sight. "You don't have to put the sword away, if it keeps you company." An allowance; not because you're Megan, but because you're a weapon, and it's hard to try and be anything else and Natalie can goddamn relate to that if she can relate to anything.

"Thank you," you rasp, and you mean for everything, but the conversation at the road has dropped and there is a prickle of expectation from behind you that makes your shoulders tuck up while you and Natalie prom-dance closer.

"Thought you two had eloped," Stark calls, and you are viciously reminded of etiquette, of who would or would not expect any, and either way you'd have to greet Stark first, and you want to wear Natalie like a shield.

Rogers' overpowering scent still flags of the fight, all high energy and good stress, all guts and glory; and Stark's rivalry Alphahood still smells like hot mecha garbage and vaguely alcoholic injury. You're pretty sure you smell like misery, like longing and anxiety and resentment, applewood smoke, not apple pie.

You grip your sword, your and Nat's stroll uninterrupted, you walking backward, her steps a careful follow, bracing, pushing you maybe. You roll the tension out of your shoulders, and turn a bit in Natalie's grip, chin jerking up to bare your throat and show your teeth at the trio, wide white grin that you once used to draw the cameras off Bro's hunched shoulders. "Sup." But Natalie said you didn't have to greet anybody if you didn't need to, so you don't, still half tangled in her hold anyway. You take the weight of your duffel from her shoulder, keep your side to the road, no head-on challenge, half a step from retreat.

"Where's your _escort,"_ Rogers barks, military stone, and you jump.

"Right here," Stark grumbles, swatting Rogers in the elbow. "Don't be that guy."

But Natalie is laughing. "Bottom of the Thames," she answers, and relents you your persons to skip-jog to Rogers' scooping embrace. They butt heads and wrestle and depart, Natalie to the dousy dad-bod Beta in the glasses and lumpy knit sweater, Rogers to the disgruntled Stark devoid his armor, to nudge him your way. 

You're a little more interested in Nat's freedom of affection with the soft-looking Beta of the group, but reality suspends itself for no man and Stark is in front of you and you blanch into the embrace and tighten your grip on your sword before deferring to tuck it back into the STRIFE pocket, about as unsettled by holding a weapon near the unarmed as you are by being without. 

Stark pulls the scratch of his goatee from your neck and claps you hard on the back, an awkwardly rough attempt at familiarity - and presents you with a hand upturned at Mr. America himself, who is, uh, _tall,_ and kinda difficult to look at, _bonita_ -wise. "David, this is Captain Rogers, First Avenger and Head of House. Captain Stephen Grant Rogers, David Elizabeth Strider." Which is flawless etiquette but still makes your mouth pull back, breath shallowed.

Rogers' expression had gone a little wobbly and tight at the formality, too. "Thanks, uh, _Anthony,"_ he cocks his head, eyebrows gone all interesting Stark's way as he holds a hand out to you, as if to shake.

You take the hand, and it's a big hand, big enough to actually make you look like the Meg you are, and Rogers is tall like Brodie without any of the nightmarish haunch, bulky like Brodie without any of the nightmarish crags, and none of how Rogers smells (dyed leather armors, grill char, all that fight) is anything like how Bro smells (sweat, tequila salt, motor oil), but surely they smell the same (Alpha, huge and hale and unworried) because Rogers pulls your wrist up to the hot damp breath of his mouth and you feel that familiar heat drop from your gut to your thighs like you're talking to a memory, asscrack suddenly slick beneath the obfuscation of your hoodie, under the thick denim of your jeans, against the cotton stretch of your briefs.

Slicked, and getting slicker, a warm soak behind your taint as Rogers slots his face where Stark's had been, where Natalie had tucked hers, tasting them there, tasting _you._ Your skin opens its pores and vents your body heat, your chemistry, and you begin to shake, and shake, which is par for a keyed-up Meg with nowhere to go. Rogers, of course, tuts exactly as Natalie had and makes your pantyload situation about a million times worse when he - yep, there it is, the godforsaken _hug,_ the big warm wrap of a leather-kevlar arm behind your waist, and you tug your shades up to _bury_ your face in the span of Rogers' neck above the stiff collar of his uniform because fuck your life, basically.

Just, fuck it.

You're cold and disturbed and such a fucking 'Meg it was never a goddamn joke; you _luxuriate_ in the arrest of your fear, let all that tension erode as you huff a dry sob or three under Rogers' ear, and your body stops slicking itself, blessedly (because you're not turned on, you're just scared, and you've never been so alone, and -)

The greeting breaks apart with another back-slap, but it's too late, you're carrying a dense cloud of apple spice souped in with fuck, pokerface returned and the cool shuffle in your step unharried as you are more or less passed on to the Beta. Healthy Omegas were always wafting up the joint at the first word go, which was in part why you needy fuckers weren't hardly allowed to leave the fucking house - and it's normal and you know it's not something that bears remark, even, but you could die? Yeah, you could just... go find a nice warm patch of highway to nap on, and die. Be great.

"See? Painless." Stark says, and you can see yourself laughing hysterically but you stoically bare your neck at the dadbod Beta instead, and fall into one of the most comfortable Introductions in the history of your short ugly life.

The Beta's Intro is literally comfortable, gives you actual comfort, your face downed against a shoulder scented of wool and bread and patchouli, fuck's sake, and your confusion tugs your grimace sideways. "Dave," you say, even though you're sure he would have heard Stark's announcement.

"Bruce," Beta dadbod answers against your neck, all gruff and dadly, and claps your shoulder like the rest, but slower, leaves his hand there, gives you a squeeze, a steadying brace as you part.

"I'm gonna call you 'Mom'," the gremlin that lives in your brain makes you say. 

You are more than a little relieved when Bruce scoffs, a smile in his tired eyes. "Please don't," he protests, but it's with all the inflection of someone used to playing the 'straight' in the comedy duo, his grin wry and knowing. "That would make me feel _old."_

Natalie scoffs behind you, and you turn to find the Alphas had already wandered off to scout down either side of the road for a field big enough to land a quinjet. Stuffing yourself into an enclosed space with a handful of strangers whilst wet between the legs is kind of the last thing you'd like to do, though, so you palm your CAPTCHA in your hoodie pocket and pop your cellphone out. Bro gets a quick text that he won't answer, an update that you've delivered yourself to Stark's custody and to check the News about the Statue of Liberty for some good-faith evidence, and you beg him not to fucking self-immolate in a motel room in Vegas or anything.

Bruce stays at your elbow in an effortless hover, hands in the pockets of his jogging sweats, and some part of you knows he was at the battle but can't parse his extremely mild manner with the bulbous green ragefreak who'd gone ham on Tentacle Dan back there. "Yo, uh," you husk, and offer your phone forward, contacts open. "Can you put the address in? Bro wants to send my stuff," you lie, you lie, you lie.

Bruce frowns a bit, but takes your phone and starts to type. "He doesn't have that already?"

"Busy guy, says he misplaced the napkin," you lie, you lie, you lie. Anything that wasn't in the duffel bag was still in Houston, to remind Brodie to pick you back up anytime he wanted to get over his shit.

Bruce's smile is warm and genuine as he hands your phone back over, and it almost makes you feel bad for tricking him. "Is he gonna drop by sometime? I know somebody who would love to talk shop on the work he's done with Doctors Brown and Pawnee."

"We can't expect Houston around any time soon, no," you say, and the chill makes it into your voice despite your effort to code-switch appropriately. "I could get them his e-mail," you shrug, because you want to help, because you're helpful, because you were ~~trained up~~ raised right.

Bruce shakes his head, holds a hand up, "Oh, I uh, I don't wanna impose."

You plug the address into the GPS, check your unread, unanswered texts while the map loads. Stark jogs past toward the field Rogers had scouted and the high whine of a quinjet graces the air from the treeline. You shift your duffel strap and nod like you're going to follow Natalie, but tap Bruce on the elbow, jerk your head up. "I'll meet y'all there."

Before he can ask, you flash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !! sorry for missing scenes or chapters; this story is still going through pacing revisions so like 9/23/19 alkfdjdklfdalhdk things is getting wacky again i had to go to sleep and couldn't finish it all in one go :(


	4. I : IV

Your name is ~~IRON MAN~~ TONY STARK, genius, billionaire, philanthropist, ~~playboy~~ husband, and you are ON THE ~~BAD~~ BETTER END OF YOUR FORTIES, PROBABLY, the first time you meet Houston face to face. This happens approximately ONE WEEK before you meet Dave Strider, face to faceplate.

"Yo," Houston husks from his spread-kneed sprawl in your office chair and you are not too proud to admit that you scream, a little, because this office was empty when you left it and Houston had waited for the dim doorside light to come on before easing the chair around to reveal himself, which is about as cartoonishly villainous as it gets. Everything about Houston screams villain, in fact - the albinism (?), the biker gloves (??), the hunchback, the generally cryptic reluctance to go public with any of his patents, textbook misanthropy; everything. It was amazing he hadn't made a ploy for world domination yet, but he was well on SHIELD's radar for the possibility. "You remember D, right? Used to deliver for me."

You remember the COURIER that had served as communication between you and Houston in the past, some third-grader with a sword as tall as himself, but you didn't know it had a letter designation and you're scraping through the rubble of your scattered focus just to manage some outrage. "Remind me."

Houston holds his hand out to measure the height his courier would have been and you assume that's who he's referencing because that's the only person you ever shared in acquaintance. "Name's Dave, he's nineteen now."

"I thought that kid was a robot," you complain, because you did, but you're remembering Houston from the handful of corroborations you'd shared over the years and you're feeling a little more familiar about him, now, a little more forgiving. This was an ally, right, this was a homeboy; this was a goofy redneck savant who thought robotics should never be utilized in warfare, should be regulated to, what was it he liked to say - self-improvement, exploration of the natural world and creative expression? Pff.

"Naw." Houston leans forward, elbows on knees, rubs his hands together, cracks his knuckles, then stands.

You try not to flinch, or shrink away, because this is Your House, dammit, and you've seen pictures of Houston, grainy satellite footage, a facetime or two just to confirm who was on the other end of the schematics in your e-mail; you're not that shocked, you're not that easy to unsettle, and you know what a big candy-handed _nerd_ he is, really, despite his size. You are not prepared for the way that Houston _smells,_ injured tobacco syrup, the cloy of orangetree blossom in the swamp-ass heat of high summer, a heavy storm of sour welding smoke; he smells sad, defeated, and his stoop is deferential, hand wringing the back of his neck, looking for all the world like an oversized teenager about to beg for the keys to the minivan.

"I got a favor to ask."

You blink, lower your hands (they'd gone up in defense from the start). "Yeah? What do I get?" Fingers crossed he just wants some project funding, and you'll get publisher's rights to some of his cyborganics, go ahead and launch America's medical market ahead a few decades, start a friendly new patent race against the East Indies.

Houston shrugs, the sleeves of his polyester bowling shirt straining to contain his shoulders. "You get D. Unless we're talking dowry already." He makes a show to reach slowly into the back pocket of his baggy jeans, careful not to insinuate a weapon draw, and tugs a lightly crumpled brochure out, wallet chain rattling. He wags the brochure up, then shuffles forward to drop it on the lamp table nearest.

You groan in the back of your throat, wary, but curious. You wanted a collaboration, not a concubine. "I am married now, you know." You make a clumsy, tired slap for the brochure, click the lamp on, fumble the brochure open to squint down through your 10 p.m. insobriety. "You didn't RSVP the invite, Big'N'Tall."

Houston scratches the back of his head, tipping his wide-billed trucker cap lower over his shades as he settles back against the wall, an easy lean. "I sent a gift."

"You sent a tiny automated Iron Suit, to mock my failures." You flip the brochure around, tap it as if to knock out its secrets, and make your way behind your desk, tug a brighter lamp alight. "Or at least I'm guessing that was you. Could have been anybody." You heave a sigh as you nudge the rolling desk chair out of your way, dismissing the waft of Houston's leftover citrus distress. "Why are all my friends so weird."

"That Ultron snafu almost got me called in to work on a Sunday. Man's gotta be let alone to his Sundays, Anthony."

"Uh. You're an atheist," you remind archly, warm now with Houston's company, how well this was going, reminded that Houston didn't do crowds or daylight or whatever; that he wasn't here to rob you or propose something dangerous that needed the secrecy of such a clandestine drop-in. No, Houston was just _weird,_ just a big ol' eccentric tucked away in his own little corner of imperiled americana, Handling Shit that SHIELD had long left up to the specialists on the Federal payroll. The automated Iron Suit had been a mockery of the AI you had given your own Iron Suit over to, and had stood no taller than your knee, striking any number of body-builder poses on its own, at the behest of a motion sensor, until the batteries ran down. You take another turn at the brochure in your hands, flattening it out under the desk light to stand over and read, farsighted in your middling age. "Pepper loved the mini-me, by the way. Said you should make toys, nearly offered you a product line."

"Well thank your missus for me, but Mattel is literal Satan and I doubt Stark Industries is looking to diversify their portfolio all that far."

You scoff, grin flickering up under a serious consider, the heels of your hands braced. "We've got to do _something_ with the company once we achieve world peace. Pound those swords into ploughshares, as they say."

Houston tilts his chin, prompting. "I'll give that a think, but for now I just need you to take this kid off my hands. What's the verdict?"

You couldn't focus on the information in the brochure because it was all a little too generic, a little too leading, homogenized for the Auction. Talents included cooking, laundry, housekeeping, illustration, piano. A real renaissance Meg, practiced in meditative Tai Chi and not a word of all the hand-to-hand combat that surely accompanied. "I'm not in the market for a side-piece, Brodie, thanks all the same."

"He don't need to start your harem, man, he just needs a legal custodian what ain't me. And a job wouldn't hurt." Houston scratches the back of his jaw, makes something like an effort to convince you, "Be a shame to see his real skillset go to waste; and you got that firecracker on your team, and she's Meg 'n all."

You take a sharp, deep breath through your nose, having reached your decision easily, once he phrased it like that. "Yes," you exhale. "But this seems more like a favor you're doing us, Hux. What's the catch?"

"There are a couple catches, yeah." Houston shakes his head, slow. "Bout three years done since D got hisself on that Auction, and the getting there wasn't any kinda pretty. Got me in on some nonsense with a hook-sink Alpha, guy what marked D up and sent D back to me like a bounced fukken check. Killed him."

You glance sharply up at Houston, Brodie, Broderick Strider. "Killed Dave? The ordeal killed Dave, emotionally?"

Houston's mouth narrows. "No," he explains evenly.

You sit, tugging the desk chair under your weight just in time. "Uh," you blink wide, slouched back as if you'd just been slapped. "You killed the guy." You search Houston's bulk; all those scars, those were from that underground defense he ran with his courier, the courier who wasn't a robot at all but a human being, a kid, a guy, an Omega in an Auction, now, thrown to the mercy of the World United Keep. "I mean duh, you killed the guy, 'Widow' Auction, but usually that's just - that just means -"

Houston's mouth firms wide again, a little crookedly. "Just means the Meg is second-hand? Hell I didn't expect to, but fact stands that I killed the guy. Got myself a Feral Indictment, got unassigned from the field. They're still throwing me in underground but we've got a few doctors now getting them gateways sewn up and I don't know what they want to do with D, if they're going to try and keep him on some of those expeditions, like. And he didn't hardly half wanna be there beside me in the first place, see, much less go it alone."

You're still reading, and you let your scoff answer sympathetically. "I keep forgetting you're the other half of the Strider team," you mutter, flipping back through David's profile before slapping the paper down. You sit forward, reach across your desk to rouse your laptop, pulling it over open to yourself, and bring up a SHIELD profiling database access, to get a clearer picture of Dave's combat prowess. The Striders rarely made news, with good reason for the covert nature of their field work, which also rarely made the news, unless a mission had gone tits-up. One didn't want to ever see a Strider - a visible Strider was a cue of disaster, a hint of the chaos boiling under the Tex-Mex territory, like smoke before the fire, or spark before the C4 detonation. "Avengers wouldn't say no to bringing you both on, no need to forfeit custody. You can't do field work but you can pop a squat in our labs any goddamn time."

Houston exhales, hands shoved deep in both pockets and shoulders up and you actually meet your reflection in his welder's shades. "Naw, friend," he begs quietly, and there's a hurt there you can't deduce. His elbows wag out, his closed-lipped smile conclusive. "We didn't always get along growing up, me 'n D, but now it's -" He sucks a chirp of air past his teeth, disapproving. "He's nineteen, Anthony, I don't got any other way to explain that. Won't stay home, won't stop alley-cattin' around, leaving me with the cleanup. And with me killin' that asshole Pierson, getting myself demoted, it ain't exactly -" he huffs, chin jutting. "State's kinda knocking on our door, lately, and D would want to be stuck barefoot pregnant under some oily billionaire don't know ass from elbows like he'd want a kick in the teeth."

You blink, chin drawing back, a little offended. "Well I'd have the same problem, wouldn't I? He'd need to be married off eventually, and -" You hiss, realization striking as your brain catches up with what exactly it is you've been reading on your screen about one David E. Strider. "Nevermind," You tuck Dave's brochure under your chin to type, heel bouncing with impatience. "Still not sure how this is doing _you_ a favor," you insist, hungrily watching the e-mail take form under your rapid conceptualization, the edits, the backspaces and the cursor ploughing forward with each new burst of inspiration. 

Houston leaves the wall to approach, hand bracing on the edge of the desk, his loom folded over to watch you with faint concern in the downturn of his stoic frown. "It's a favor to me, on account of that NDA case that went down in '98."

Your typing slows. The '98 NDA was the first North American precedence of legal autonomy for Extra-Terrestrials claiming refugee status within borders, which had lobbied that they not be kidnapped and autopsied on, in so many words. The Non-Dissection Agreement, with a preamble to the ruling that let aliens maintain an individualized Nation unto themselves, and all medical investigations or genetic robbery as illegal as espionage and resource theft - and as good as declarations of war. You frown, and sigh silently through your nose. "That might be true over custody of your household's Omega, but legally and medically speaking your House claim would only count if you were David's parent, not sibling." Your typing resumes pace. "And the other 'skybabies' all tested human, champ. You're not aliens you're just weird."

Houston nods, unmoved. "Extra-Terrestrial, as in not from this Earth. Human sure as you like, but definitely not Terran. It's a ruling for a Nationality, not a species."

Your brow flinches out a furrow. "Okay? And?"

"And that's why this is a favor y'all are doing me." Houston's large hand flickers forward, deftly snatching the brochure from under your chin. "Dirt-ass no-accounts from the Auction wanted 'genetic history', make sure all them little Ds that could pop out for some highrollin' diva won't grow up to have diabetes or schizophrenia or what shit, and I'm the closest living relative, right?" The pamphlet is unfolded to the last page, slid flat across the desk, Houston's middle finger tapping down. Dave Strider's set of profile pictures were a patchwork of scars, white-haired albinism, teeth just a bit too wide, incisors just a bit too sharp, and sure a rounder jaw in a softer face but there was the taut carry of Houston's high cheekbones, too, the bow of his upper lip, even the shape of his hands, if slimmer.

"What the shit, you've been Asian this _whole time?"_ You crab, because Dave's eyes are a soft, level narrow that pull the rest of his face into a coherent whole, a brown kid desaturated of his color.

Houston tutts. "Pacific Islander, Anthony; we don't wield Ninjato to _look cool."_

"Not _just_ to look cool," you tease, aiming a conciliatory smirk. "At ease, cowpoke, we're all Americans, it's just... yeah. I didn't expect that." You laugh, try not to classify it as a giggle, but it is. "You sound like Clint fucking Eastwood, man, c'mon, let this be as surreal for me as it would be for anyone else."

"Long tale trimmed," Houston heads on, ignoring you. "I got me a contact over in the UK as what had up and got a skybaby of her own thereabouts same age as Dave, and she agreed to a resource exchange." Houston's eyebrows rise, frown thinning. "Worst possible way to find out. Woulda rather got it in an envelope from Maury. Some fat angry Meg throwin' a chair over my head. Shit."

You laugh, because it's funny, as most sad things are. "How is that possible." They both fell out of the sky, the Striders, taking atmospheric entry burn like most toddlers take a bath in the kitchen sink. Human, sure. Mutants, maybe. No real way to find that out, NDA.

Houston rolls his shoulders forward. "Clone process from whatever lies behind those spirograph portals, from what Miss Roxanne over in the Kingsmans' found out so far. I technically got a daughter, too, with her - if we're following the genetic trail accurate. Never been to the UK a day in my life." He inhales with the creak of smoker's lungs, shifts his weight. "So you'd be doing me this favor, because you could not legally claim on D, or whatever little D's might come from him, no matter the custody on the contract. He's still technically mine, under our non-denominational Sky Nation _and then_ because of the inheritance clause." Because the NDA specified that not even marriage could rob a non-terrestrial of their legal autonomy, to swerve any of the Caliphate's hierarchic ploys. 

You throw your shoulders back into your office chair's comfortable brace, rolling a bit from the momentum, and cross your legs at the ankle, settling in to Think. "I'm thinking," you explain helpfully, finger up to stall Houston's pensive study. "What, uh," you cough, sit forward again. "What would be the terms of this bid? Did you get any contract drafts printed up, or...?"

"My people will get ahold of your people, Anthony, only tell me you're gonna do this thing for me."

Your smile flickers up half your face and falls, and you tap your fingertips across the edge of your chair's arm, wagging a lazy roll behind your desk and out. "Okay Brodie," you husk, taking pity. "I'll send the idea up to Hill or Fury if the Team's not in. We'll get your kid settled, either way." You square back up to the desk, elbows spread. 

Nobody who wanted an Omega for a stable home life would take Dave under the threat of losing him at any time to Brodie's whim, and especially not if their children could disappear - not that Brodie seemed like he was rarin' for the domestic life, but the possibility itself would drive any kind of domestically-minded suitor off; Dave's Auction bids would _have to_ want him for something else, something superficial and possibly damaging, a status display or bodyguard or fucktoy.

It was completely understandable why Houston was approaching you, now, to try and marry Dave off. He trusted you. He trusted you to take care of someone he had killed for. That meant something. You steeple your fingers, then unset the display for its cartoonish lean towards villainy. "We're doing this, but Dave's the favor, not the payment. So what are you prepared to give us?"

And Houston - Brodie to the people he considered friends, Broderick Strider to the Courts, TimaeusTestified to the many harried cyber-security engineers you have ever employed - he looks sharply left like somebody's suggested something distasteful, shakes his head and straightens his cap back. "A'ight. Ain't a hypocrite." He squares up to the desk, too, sniffs, cowboy tough. A shrug, thumbs in belt. "The Avengers take Dave, I'll give SHIELD me. If your suitor takes a pass, if it's SHIELD that gets D," a nod, fill-in-the-blank. "Then the Avengers will get one more Alpha-riot in the mix. You'll have the Striders on contract, either way."

* * *

The next time you meet Houston FACE TO FACE, you've got the comfort of a few witnesses in a wide conference room, your lawyers and Brodie's lone, sweaty Federal Contractor, and you wish you could say the daylight softens out some of Broderick Strider's STONE-COLD INTIMIDATION, but it does not. Just about every set of pheromones in the room are giving off several wafts of distress, in fact, the clarity of the daylight through the floor-down windows only serving to highlight Houston's every scar from swollen biceps to black biker gloves, from the low open collar of his bowling polo up to the pale ginger of his hairline, an otherwise beaky-handsome bone structure marred with all the gnarl of what had probably been a very gruesome bite from one of those underground beasties he was put up against. 

Brodie is still in a way that unsettles more than assures, robot-calm, statue-esque but haunting. You think he might be napping behind the black matte of his welder's shades, sprawled back as he is in the ergonomically supportive conference chair, but he twitches forward to accept the revised contract when it's slid his way and just about everyone startles away from the movement, like those little white birds that pick the lice or whatever off giant sunning buffalo, a ripple of white collars that settle immediately back to what they were doing despite their momentary flurry.

You laugh, because it's funny, as most sad things are.

Houston red-pens a few things while he flips through the contract draft, and it's still difficult to reconcile the Brodie behind all those project trade-offs over the years between you, just because the body at the table is so big, so hacked up. 

It was hard to remember that Thor was smart, too, but Thor had a rough thousand years of living on Brodie, a rough thousand lightyears of inter-planetary experience to match; plus Thor's kindness wore itself on his sleeve, in his big brilliant grin and wide lax embraces, and anyway that made it difficult to remember his intelligence. Brodie spoke and acted every part the mad genius, but that usually came in a package like, well, not even as badly weathered as your own self, usually skinnier or softer, pear-shaped. TimaeusTestified didn't type in a grammatically colorful southern accent, is all, and you smirk to yourself imagining a tiny pilot driving Brodie's bulk from within his chest, marionette operator who e-mailed you whole essays on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence and the role cyborganics were supposed to play in human longevity, who never told you how he got that proto-skin to look so _real_ when his own skin hardly exampled whatever humanity he was trying to front.

Brodie should update his own chassis, nevermind the robots. Could start with a spray-tan, go from there, get some Avon spackle for those scars, really just Edward Scissorhands himself to a nice Winona Ryder of his own, fuck.

You gently tug the returned contract out of someone's grip, for yourself, assured that nobody in that room forgot how smart _you_ were, except that they seemed to be protective of you in a way bordering on obnoxious, crowding between you and Houston, saving you from a papercut or something, christ. Brodie's edits are... personal. That's the only word you can summon, and the number one excuse why you don't dismiss the changes, or double down on your rights as the (let's be blunt) buying party.

"Sounds good," you say, and your voice hardly wavers, because if you ever found out you were a father, you wouldn't want to forfeit your kid so thoroughly, either, Omega or Skaian or super hero or not.

Houston lifts his chin, a thanks, and you can kinda see it, the Pacific Islander in there somewhere, how the lines of his face sweep upward into the mask of his shades, hinting at the colorless nightmare mash of Dwane Johnson and Keanu Reeves that he was hiding from the ravenous Press. People were only ever more alike, genomically, than they were different, but still. You wanted to see Houston's face, you wanted to put a humanity to him, a history and a culture, a piece of the real planet earth that he visibly carried in his weaponry and his emotives and his family values; not just some weirdo misanthrope from the sky, but an actual person. You think maybe this is as close as you'll ever get to seeing any part of Broderick Strider otherwise hidden from the larger public, this favor you're doing him, the enormity of his request. Reading his handwriting on the contract, the words formed there, that was as close to seeing Brodie's bare face as anything, and you're grateful for the witness of more than most.

Nobody else in that room knew, probably, why Brodie would want to keep House rights; maybe they'd assume he was weird and clingy for a brother, that he didn't have any other family and probably wouldn't _get_ any other family, for himself, for obvious reasons. 

Your lawyers are firm in their protest, but House rights are just, what, the foot in the door if Brodie ever wants to visit his grandkids (oof) and not get an ear torn off for it because he'd only legally be an uncle. House rights are just the opening conversation, if David ever had to file for an NFD, or if he were widowed again (likelier) - then Brodie would have his place marker, default custody, and you don't see any fucking thing wrong with that, at all.

This is the favor you're doing Houston, in exchange for his hire into SHIELD ranks - and you are more than confident in Steve's autonomy, that Steve wouldn't fight to keep David if they didn't actually get along, wouldn't bring legal action into family affairs, wouldn't want David left to Auction if the Avengers ever beefed it all at once. You're doing Houston this favor, so it's gotta come off favorable, and you override your lawyers' protests, hand the revised contract to your wife, whose Beta calm carries with her out of the conference room to type up the finalized draft.

You fold your hands, take an exaggerated lean over the table to see past your keepers, wink at Brodie, who lets the corner of his mouth tick up in reply, and he's got those really nifty long dimples, cheek to chin, like yourself, and you wonder if Dave's kids will have that, or Steve's regular short sunken dimples, or both. "You're going to look like a pointier Bryan Cranston when you grow up," you say, because the only thing worse than an awkward silence is a fearful one.

Brodie's grin shows teeth, wide and cigarette yellow. _",I am_ the one who knocks'."

The white birds flutter, and it's funny, as most sad things are.

* * *

"You need to do better, Anthony," Bruce admonishes gently, when you glance back to check on your brand new ward and find thin air.

Your name is ~~ANTHONY~~ TONY STARK, billionaire, genius, super hero; and you are TODAY YEARS OLD when you learn that Omegas can, in fact, disobey their Alphas. You share a brief, silent commiseration with the powerless frustration in Houston's voice as he'd told you, well, Dave was nineteen, and there was no better way to explain it. You've had Dave for all of five minutes and were already a little overworked.

"Me?" You frown, following Steve's oblivious march up the gangplank of the quinjet. "What about Rogers, he hasn't even checked."

"Checked what?" Steve glances back even as he's taking the pilot's chair, all innocent eyebrows and casual disregard. This isn't the first 'Meg he's been thrown in the present day, but hopefully Dave will be the last.

"That's not Cap's responsibility," Bruce argues with a measure of disappointment in his scowl. "Omegas need stability, Tone, not whatever flaky mixed signal you were throwing around just now. Jesus, if I didn't know you any better I'd assume you hate _me_ sometimes, the way you never -"

"Which! Is why!" you interrupt, taking the copilot's seat just to escape Bruce's wounded expression. "I got Dave for Rogers, not myself. Rogers," you swat Steve's armored elbow. "You heard Banner, you dropped the ball buddy. Gotta keep up with your Pack Dynamic, gotta do better bossman, come on."

Steve glances from the open jet door to you, to Natalie and Bruce, then back to the door as it eases shut. "Is Dave not taking the jet with us?"

"It seems he is not," Natalie says, buckling herself in. She pats Bruce's forearm, tugs him down to a sit, starts to help buckle him in.

Bruce startles to discover Natalie's hand on the crossbelt as he takes it for himself, still glaring back at you. "I mean it, Tony. This isn't like Pete, I can't just step in and take care of him for you whenever you get frustrated or impatient or bored or whatever, Omegas are _different_ -"

"Oh they are, are they?" Natalie all but purrs under her breath, stalling Bruce's lecture down to a stutter.

"I'll handle it," Steve speaks above the jet's takeoff engines, three simple words that snap up the attention of all in the cabin, silence the bickering that had started to brew. "Dave already seems like he's made of tougher stuff than the usual 'Meg, Bruce, but I'll take your advice and try to be more, uh, _forward._ Did he tell anybody where he was going?"

Bruce clears his throat, waits until the jet is gliding silently homeward to answer. "I gave him the coordinates for our supply hangar, since he asked for a shipping address, so I guess he'll be there."

"Technically didn't disobey me," you say to nobody in particular, to yourself mostly. "Not like I ordered him to follow."

"Yeah," Bruce grunts, glowering. "That's what I mean, when I say you need to do better. You have to actually communicate what you want; he'll be used to, er -"

"Taking orders," Natalie finishes helpfully. "You can say it. It probably wasn't a conventional upbringing under Houston and the people they worked for. In fact," Nat unbuckles, stands to lean her arm across the back of your chair, watching sky and horizon through the broad cockpit window. "You should treat Dave exactly as you try to treat Peter. He'll receive it better."

You grunt, grateful for the advice, but. "Cool thanks. Still didn't get him _for me,_ so maybe we figure out how it is Cap should treat Dave, instead."

"Like he treats you," Natalie affirms with a decisive nod, to the disgust and laughter of the cockpit. 

You feel an affronted heat bloom up your neck. "Did you just _un-rank_ me? In my own jet?"

"I mean it," Natalie says, with every tone of austerity as Steve actually turns his ear up toward her to better listen. "Steve trusts you to make your own judgement calls, gives you elbow room on the battle field and listens to your advice, even if he doesn't always agree." She turns a bit at the waist to address Rogers, one foot crossed lax over the other in her lean. "Steve, you always make your expectations known in a clear and direct manner, because you think Tony doesn't get subtext."

"I get subtext," you say.

"Tony gets subtext," Natalie agrees. "He just chooses to ignore it, when convenient to his defense. I think Dave will do the same - he'll take as many loopholes as we leave him, so don't leave any important ones. Choose your battles."

By this time Bruce has joined the conference behind Steve's chair, leaning similarly, looking about ten years aged past his due. "I don't think I want to know we have another _Tony_ with us, Natasya."

The heat of your indignation turns a note, softened to a warmth. Dave was mouthy, and cagey, and wore a veneer of pop-culture cool to cover the total mess of chain-smoking nerves he was on the inside, not unlike yourself. His brochure had discreetly implied that he was 'experienced' in the bedroom, and Houston had all but lamented the kid was a slut, also not unlike your own salacious self. "Houston said he was 'real sweet'," you argue mulishly. "That he'd mind us just fine."

Bruce and Natalie share a shrug. "Marketing pitch?" Bruce hazards, chewing the inside of his cheek. "He didn't _not_ mind us, like you said, he just sort of, er," A hesitation toward Natalie, reluctant to offend her Meganhood. "Took initiative."

"He'll mind us." Steve nods, watching the ground approach ahead. "We just have to give him something to actually mind, is all. So what's the report on apprehending Doctor Santiago - is that thing we faced back there good for a clue?"

Bruce grunts a negative, joins the shop talk. "Open water is a lot trickier to track through, but I suppose we can contact an oceanographer's guild to see if their subjects are veering off course, or disappearing. Disturbances in food chains might connect up to the Doctor's hideaway - if he isn't actually on a boat."

You cross your arms and sit up back against your chair. "I'll get the satellite networks sourced, bribe the appropriate gatekeepers, match vessel sightings with registered freighter or fisher path marking. Worst case scenario, we help catch some smugglers or pirates or covert naval offenders. Worser case scenario, the Santiago lab is in a submarine." The standing passengers hash that possibility over, and pitch a few next moves against environmental radical Michaello Santiago, and eventually take their landing seats, and you frown up into your thoughtful sniff, jaw wagged side to side. You steal a glance at Steve, narrow your eyes as he follows through on landing protocol. "So, hot take? Five-minute first impression? What's going on in that big blonde head, Rogers, is this - does this seem like - I mean at this point honestly I'll take him if you don't -"

"Smells like apples," Steve admits quietly as the plane touches down, chin tipped like he's keeping a secret. You can see the glint in his eye trade places with the hard military flint of tactical consideration. "And he's fast, but that was on the file. I guess I just didn't realize how fast; what was he doing down in Texas, again?"

"Fighting fast things, apparently. SHIELD was always elbowed away from the Tex-Mex problem by General Cutter so that's blackout info -" you switch gears, cheerfully, "But hey! You can ask Dave all about that!" You clap Steve's forearm, wobbling the jet to the side a bit on its way to the landing platform unfolding from under the Complex's lawn. "All sorts of morbid history for you two to bond over. Brag about your scars, bitch about the American Government always weaponizing its leggy blondes, talk shop, compare swords, the whole deal."

Steve does the thing with his mouth when he wants to smile but won't. "I don't have a sword."

You scoff, unbuckling to stand as the back loader is hissing open, and throw over your shoulder, "Guess we don't have to worry about getting Dave knocked up, then."

"Tony," Steve warns, following you out of the jet in a lope. He catches your elbow on the way through the compound yard. "Come get Dave with me. He knows you."

"He knows you, too," you complain, "About as well as he does me. Look, guy, I'm tired, hungry, a little hungover and a little too old to play wingman. I have to hose my suit down. I have to hose my _self_ down." You pull away, mouth set. "You should, too. Take a shower, get all that conflict off, go get your Meg." Because you don't want the situation to implode - you want Steve to make up his mind to the tune of immediately, since Dave already knew why he was here and any hesitation on Steve's part was going to come off like a rejection, and you want this to work. You want your people happy.

You want to do right by your friends, for once.

"I'll come," Natalie offers from the jet, stepping out into the sunny afternoon to stretch a kink from her shoulder. "Though you might have more luck with Bruce."

"Or with _Happy,"_ Bruce hollers on his way to the wide overhang of the complex foyer. "I'm not cleaning up after any of you for any of this, guys, I mean it. Nobody asked for my vote on a new Avenger, so it's not my - it, it's not any of - if Dave's scared then that's entirely on you -"

"Why would he be scared?" Steve says, honest heartfelt _stupid_ Steve. "He could easily -" you watch realization dawn in those famously blue eyes that, yes, Dave was actually a dangerous sort of person, exactly like Natalie or Bruce or you, maybe, if you could have made as many more mistakes as dire as Extremis.

"He could easily kill you," you finish, helpful, and stall at Steve's side. Bruce vacates the foyer to join you on the lawn. "Could easily kill us all. Won't, probably," you add, hands in pockets, sharing a nod with Bruce, who deflates and shuffles over. "Definitely won't if you can get him under hand, since I'm such crap at -" you flick the air, "Peopling."

"You're not off the hook, Anthony," Bruce hisses, elbowing you. "I'll go," he says, louder, raising a defeated hand. "Go relax, you two, we'll be back with Dave in a few hours."

Steve's eyebrows jump.

Natalie blinks slow.

You turn mid-retreat, almost rolling your ankle. "Hours? What? Why?"

"Well," Bruce squints, the plum wine bouquet of him gone musty with defensiveness. "I guess you don't want to make that your business, anymore. So it isn't. Your business."

Natalie rolls her eyes, her step swerving lazily back around, and she shoots both you and Bruce a cold look, but doesn't remand Steve as she waits for further indication to go or stay, hands on hips.

You blink. Your close-lipped smile flicks up, drops. "Have fun, then." You wave, passively cheerful. "I'll try to leave some hot water in the building, but no promises."

"Tony," Steve _warns_ and your carefully shored temper is plucked like a violin string, twanging all the nerves around it.

 _"Steve,"_ you mock, arm thrown wide. "Dave has to learn that he isn't a prisoner, with me. If I go after him now I'm just setting a precedent. He'll run and I'll chase." You're a little surprised at how true that rings, since you're really only trying to give Rogers the elbow room required to get that relationship on its feet. "No. That buck stops here."

Steve blinks, arms crossed.

Bruce looks thoughtful, but heartened.

Natalie smirks, coolly, something like pride in the half lidding of her eyes as she tucks her bottom lip in, a nod of understanding.

"As true as that might be," Steve says as he hefts his shield over his back, voice low. "I'd still appreciate your help on this. At least until Dave can get to know us better."

You openly wince at the 'us' because 'us' did not mean Steve, exclusively, because Steve was still leaving the opportunity open for anyone else to make up their mind over Dave, first, which didn't exactly push the vote for 'love at first fight'. You curse softly under your breath, flap your arms, exhale. "Can I at least shower down?"

"Seconded," Bruce echoes, and you could kiss him. "We should all make ourselves a little more presentable, a little less, uh -"

Natalie, "Confrontational?"

Bruce underhands his agreement.

"Dave's been on his own a lot longer than the twenty minutes it would take us to get it together," you continue, stepping closer to appeal.

Steve shrugs with the side of his mouth. "That's why I'd prefer we leave sooner than later, Tony."

You nod, sensing a compromise. "So I'll text Dave our GPS coordinates, he'll make his way here faster than we could reach him."

Steve shakes his head, impatience in the shift of his weight. "That's not the message I want to send. It should be his choice, to stay with the team." His mouth firms. "He needs to know that if he leaves the team, the team will follow. That there are consequences to trying to go it alone." He's still waiting on you to agree, arms crossed, expectant.

You throw your hands forward, cell phone catching the sun. "Then _you_ follow, go ahead and set that pattern up for yourself, if you've nothing better to do with your time than chase a guy literally faster than light." You type out the text asking Dave to stay put until the team arrives, hands shaking a little with low blood sugar and leftover post-mission adrenaline. "Whatever you wanted to do for hours, Bruce, you can get done without me, I don't care, but I am _not,"_ you press 'send', then shove your phone back into your under-armor's hoodie pocket. "Chasing spooky veterans that might not want to get caught. Been there, done that, almost died? Never again."

Steve blanches at the v-word, because you are talking about Sergeant Barnes and it's not an easy reference to miss.

"Burning daylight," Natalie husks, pushing between you and Steve to make her way across the lawn. "I'll call the car up. We can at least change out of our gear while we wait, right?"

Steve's chest heaves in a silent sigh, but he follows.

"Anthony," Bruce starts, shoulders a line of recrimination. "This isn't some project you can bounce off to a team in a workshop if you get stuck on it - this is a person you've taken on. A type of person who needs stability above all else, and you've brought him into a Household that doesn't settle rank, doesn't follow any sort of set schedule, hell, doesn't even see each other maybe half the year if you totaled all the missions up -"

You take a longer step and a half-skip to catch up with Bruce's energized (agitated) march. "I asked. I asked Rogers if he wanted to give this a shot, give the Avengers a fresh family patine, help our PR -" to Bruce's disgusted glower - _"And_ give himself the excuse to settle down a little, get started on that American dream he's more than earned. Look, buddy, we hashed it over." You stall at the doors to the foyer, which wing into a locker room and armory into which Rogers and Natalie had already disappeared, military-efficient.

"We talked it out. I'm sorry we didn't ask everybody, you're right, that was an oversight on my part - but you've got to admit, a House Meg would be about the perfect thing, wouldn't it? Give us something to - some cohesion? For when the dust finally settles, when we can relax? Crime-fighting is all but automated nowadays, wealth disparity nearly eradicated the world over, and it's a new generation of the evolutionarily advantaged taking on all those insane-o's that get their hands on alien tech, isn't it?"

Bruce is capitulating to your stellar powers of persuasion, you can tell, but he still smells irritated.

"Hey, look," you ask, slinging an arm over the slump of Bruce's shoulders to walk him to the elevators. "Let Rogers and Romanov handle it. I think maybe Dave's just a little overwhelmed, all these new people, and he seemed to like Natalie just fine. So we can give these kids some, you know, some space -"

"Natasya is older than you and me put together, Tone, I don't think she'd appreciate you calling her a 'kid' -"

"I... did not know that," you say, then bend to let the elevator read your iris. "There's a lot to unpack there, I'm guessing."

"Do you never read the file," Bruce laments.

"I like a little mystery and surprise in my life, because the whole 'knowing everything' gig gets pretty old sometimes, sue me." The elevator doors chime open the same time your phone jarrs a vibration in your pocket and you pause to read the text. Dave is asking if 'the team' can sit this one out, because there's something at the receiving warehouse he needs to talk to you about and how the hell did you even get your name AND picture in his phone did Brodie goddamn put your contact info in, or was it some program--

You tick out a quick 'slow down', hit send, and sigh loud enough to stall Steve and Natalie behind you. "Guys," you crab, turning on heel. "I'm about to pull rank, for _the first time in my life,"_ you archly remind. "Captain, you're grounded from this assignment. Natalie, you -" you huff, shaking your head. "I don't know. Go or stay, I think that should be up to you. But I've been _summoned."_ You throw a dirty look Steve's way, daring him to be anything other than immediately contrite. "To the tune of 'specifically', no doubt because Brodie shipped me something outrageous and embarrassing and Dave would like to spare you all the magnificent discomfort of its discovery."

The car is already pulling up into the garage thoroughfare, and you don't even have time to change.

Steve's eyebrows rise, might actually be stuck that way. "Well that's a switch," is all he says, and sidles past you into the waiting elevator.

"I'll go," Natalie says, eyes narrowed in thought. "But I'll wait in the car with Bruce."

Bruce does not argue this, only shrugs apologetically at Steve as the elevator doors close out his scoff of disbelief.

"I doubt Cap cares who goes, just so long as it's someone," you amend to nobody and everybody and yourself. "Kept saying 'we' and 'us'."

"I think he only gave up because he knows what a fight smells like on him," Natalie explains as Happy's limousine coasts up the driveway from its wide garage. "And I don't mean the fishtopus."

"I wasn't going to fight for Rogers to stay," you argue, ducking into the air-conditioned interior of the limo before it's even fully stopped in front of the open foyer. You immediately comfort yourself with a mineral water, settling back into the perfume of the polished leather seating, and crab at your two teammates as they shuffle to join you. "I pulled rank; he didn't have to agree."

"He did have to agree," Bruce argues, shuffling in after Nat. "If he didn't want to smell like a fight when he went to retrieve a _jumpy Omega,_ Tony."

"You know what," you quip, slapping the bottle of mineral water back into its cup holder as Happy rounds the limo to check that all doors are shut. "Both of you, out. I can pull rank again, I can go in alone, as requested."

"Could be a trap," Natalie warns flat, sat prim with one leg crossed over the other, armors still slightly sticky. "What do we know about the Striders, really, other than they're reclusive geniuses whose only public service was performed under threat of incarceration."

"Are you kidding me," you lament, louder than necessary for the enclosed space, limo pulling out into the long driveway down to the side-road.

"I am kidding you, a little, yes." Natalie slumps down to get comfortable, flicks a dried booger of dead monster off her shoulder. "What was that drama on the lawn about, exactly?"

This, you can answer easily, and you cross your legs and toss a water to Bruce, who is wincing in his post-transformation sweats, which are also slightly damp from his unwise lean against the boat window. "Just trying to give Steve and Dave some 'alone time'. Let nature run its course without all the indignity of an audience."

Bruce, "But Dave just got here. What's the rush?"

You sigh, because this is not as easy to answer. "I'm a little worried about the Cap, guys."

Natalie, "Aren't we all."

You scoff lightly, nod, thumb the plastic sleeve of your water. "I'm a little worried the Cap doesn't... _intend,"_ you feel your eyes tighten. "To have a future. He fights like he doesn't have anything to lose." What with the way he'd up and submitted to the Winter Soldier like that on the Helicarrier bridge, just showed his belly at the first glance of a familiar face, like faces couldn't be surgically altered specifically to play on a dead man's memory.

Bruce exhales in revelation. "So you've been throwing all these romantic candidates at him, to give him a mission to serve once the fighting's done. That explains the physical therapist."

"And the psychologist," Natalie says, a woman who was her own suggestion to Steve, at one point. "And the... what was he? Chef?"

"None of those were 'mission'-y enough, I suppose." You peel the label off the bottle and squint at the smallprint. "And Dave's one of us, so," you brighten, "None of that pesky moral conundrum about putting anyone in danger or whatever Rogers' latest excuse has been."

"Quick question," Natalie prompts, side-eying you to share her suspicion with Bruce, unfairly. "Why do you care if this relationship, specifically, fails or succeeds?"

"Because from what I've heard, Dave has also been weirdly single for about three years past his Auction due. Maybe he needs a mission-y setup, too. And," you allow, a little more honestly, "I care about my weirdo genius friends, and Brodie really wanted Dave settled with someone nice. Not just win-win; win-win-win."

Bruce, tired now - "Three birds, one stone. Sounds like a greedy shot to me."

You tuck your chin, hands turned up in a small shrug. "What. I gave this a lot of thought, and Steve agreed. Once he had all the uh, the information."

"Which is...?" Natalie leans forward.

"In a file," you mumble around your next mouthful of water. "That you already read."

Natalie shakes her head, eyes shut. "I read a laundry list of military tactics and record calorie expenditure, Tony, and I got more out of Dave in the five minutes of face time we had on the boat. If those papers were all Steve had to go on, you can't hardly expect this to play out to standard, now can you?"

"Well I. don't. know." you quip, waspish in your doubt. "Maybe if we could give Dave and Rogers more than five minutes of face time, _alone,_ this would 'play out' just fine." You're a little bit scared, actually, that if this doesn't play out to standard, that you really would simply take Dave for yourself - you never could turn down a 'Meg, as many had been foisted onto your lap trying to earn their House the inheritance off your name, blithely unawares of the vasectomy you'd gotten the year you turned eighteen. And Dave, like Natalie, was _really goddamn cool,_ not your usual fawning arm-candy caked up with cosmetics and scripted porno lines. He had a _sword._

You'd have to run that by Pepper first, of course, and well - yeah, you really would rather not have to do that, and are, again, just a little worried that you wanted to. A little. A lot.

No, you _wanted_ to kick Rogers in the seat of his pants. He really was going to saddle you with Dave's custody for as long as it took the courtship to fall into place - and _your_ narcissism was already clanging some warning bells that there was no promise Dave wouldn't just lose all patience and turn that healthy libido your way. And Steve was such a fucking boyscout that he'd let that happen, too.

You meet Natalie's stare with a glint of recrimination to your own. Yeah, all right, so you maybe hadn't considered _every_ way this could go south; least of all whether or not Dave actually needed the stability of a normal Household, a standard Den. Nat certainly didn't need that - and Dave had grown up under Brodie's custody, fuck's sake, not like they were picking that apple from a particularly normative tree. "I know," you growl. Because you do, you know you fucked up letting Brodie handle Dave's DoA, you know Dave smelled like... jesus, like something broken and lost and _angry,_ despite his flawless southern etiquette and shy blushing bridehood.

Natalie was as practiced as all that, putting on those roles, herself. You weren't any more fooled than she was.

"Do you, now." Nat crosses her legs at the ankles, stretching out.

"If I don't, I'll learn."

Bruce flinches your way, exhales. "So what are we going to tell medical, in the meanwhile?"

You flinch, too, startled. "Med-medical? What, you think Dave needs a _tranquilizer?_ He's not that weird! It's been all of five minutes!"

"Buhh," Bruce protests, using the tone of voice that tells you you're being stupid but he's too polite to condescend. "Try nine years, Tone. Dave went underground with Houston when he was ten; you think he got away from all that _without_ suffering a feral break or... dozen?"

"Children in conflict zones that don't even see the fighting don't get away with any less," Natalie agrees, arms crossed over her middle, universal body language for Omegan empathy.

"He's just _weird,"_ you insist. "We don't have to turn every eccentricity into a diagnosis, _Bruce."_

"Okay, I think," Bruce cracks his door open before the car has come to a full stop in the shipping warehouse green. "I think you're applying bias where you should be applying objective scientific deduction, here, Tony, and not that - not that I _blame_ you, it's always good to know you really care about the people in your life, but -"

"You didn't see Obadiah's betrayal, nor Ultron's." Natalie strikes, softly. "People are your blind spot."

You're going to make a cutting remark for Bruce's departure, but there's a flicker past the tinted glass of the limousine window, out of the corner of your peripheral and Dave appears at the warehouse gate, paper-pale skin luminescent in direct daylight, frowning down at his phone, sword over shoulder and duffel strapped tight over his back.

"Yo," Dave greets as if nothing is amiss, completely uninvolved with the conflict unfolding from the car.

"Doctor Banner thinks you might be feral," you call, swiping your colored shades on and slamming the car door as you depart. "Any merit in that deduction, do you think?"

Dave pulls a face, jerks his chin toward the warehouse main, where one of the loading docks is yawning open. "I never fucked a person but the Alpha that left me widowed, but Brodie thought it would keep me home if he implied I was... uh, well-used goods, so." Dave shrugs, kicks the driveway gate wide on its slow hinged swing so Happy can pull the car through to the empty driving lot. "How many times am I gonna have to explain myself, about that?"

Bruce shakes his head, silent, and hangs back at the gate and you crab at him that nobody's going to try and escape.

You jog to catch up to Dave's side, testing the air. Dave seems... self-possessed. A little steadier on his feet, anger canting through his posture where before there had been clear anxiety. "I dunno, I kind of like the whole 'strong, independent Megan' angle. You could be a media force for sexual liberation, you know. Megs rights, all that."

Dave tucks his phone away, scratches his elbow. "Sure."

"What's the news, Strider." You take a breath, find relief at the bottom of your gut. Dave wasn't feral, he wasn't writhing around on the floor foaming at the mouth begging for knot; he was just Brodie-flavored, standoffish, wary. And if Brodie was under feral indictment, well, then Dave was perhaps emulating all the caginess of that - not like Feral status just snuck up on anyone, it was a psychological precedent built over years of isolation or exposure to threat, and Brodie was the whole damn checklist, isolated and enrolled in a violent struggle most all his life. If Dave was feral-esque, it was to the credit of the House from whence he'd come, and the violence, well...

Well, still and all, Megs feral'd differently than Alphas did; if Dave had a breakdown he wouldn't snap and kill the next five offenders, he'd just sort of waft and whine and puddle his way to the soonest Alpha in reach, which -

You pause right there in the lot, hands in pockets, and swallow hard, realization striking you over the head. Dave was widowed at sixteen, because the Alpha he'd run off with hadn't wanted to keep him, which spoke of something spur-of-the-moment. And who were you supposed to believe, about Dave's promiscuity? Brodie's lamentations, or Dave's clearly offended denial? Unless Dave was on suppressants, which weren't documented but wouldn't surprise you - but then again he definitely didn't smell suppressed.

Dave mops the back of his neck in a poorly concealed self-soothe. "The news is, Houston's a troll."

There past the open garage door of the modest warehouse are standing two shadowy figures you can't quite make out past the daylight you are currently draped in. The limo eases through the gravel lot like a shark through water, hesitant as if there are people in the warehouse, enemies or. It irks you that Nat and Bruce really are hanging back, really are giving Dave space, like Dave really is feral.

The denial of that idea hitches your step a little faster, and you all but plough through into the dim of the warehouse, thumbing your shades up your head to inspect the... yes, the two crudely designed robots stood in the middle of the painted cement floor.

"Square Wave model," you recognize out loud. "The first mass-produced warbot under General Cutter's Project Extermination - but these things are junk, aren't they?" You might as well have thrown a bunch of R2-D2 replicas down at the chronusbugs, for all the good these lumbering little midget-bots could actually do. Scratch that - they were good bomb carriers, had a decent strategem programming for teamwork and perimeter security, but their battery life was abysmal and the whole person-shaped design was both unsettling and a waste of resources.

Beside that lumbers a tall android in equally retro boxy framing, made large with what you assume are actual weaponry ballistics, judging by the vents in the back and the flat of the exhaust fins pushing aside its shower-curtain cape.

"Sawtooth," Dave supplies. "But look," he kicks up as if to knock the taller droid to the floor, but the Sawtooth model flickers, reappears behind you. Dave lands, throws accusatory eyebrows up at the Sawtooth model. "He couldn't do that before."

The Square Wave model copies suit, flickering back to its position at Sawtooth's side.

"And Square _definitely_ couldn't do that before, either."

Your teeth shut with a click. "So what does this mean?"

Natalie stands from the limo sunroof, perches there to watch, a line of consternation between her eyebrows.

"This means," Dave croaks, knuckles whitening on his sword. "That Brodie found a way to define, and therefore program the flash-step." He shivers, shuffles a little closer to you, shades slipping down his nose. "This means that Bro sent a dowry after all; and it's the base programming you'd need to construct a time machine."


	5. I : V

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, newfound Omegan, underground Hero of the city of Houston, slightly-less-underground DJ Turntech, and you are THIRTEEN YEARS OLD the night you unlock a new territory of the apartment in which you'd lived your whole life. You now have the privilege to loiter in BRO'S ROOM, at the discretion of any nightly needs, even if Bro pushes you out toward the shower in the morning and husks low at you to get away from the door in the daylight hours. Still, you get to cross that hallowed threshold here-to-fore forbidden, lay back in the Kingsized bed to marvel at posters tacked neatly to the walls, the lava lamps on the high thin shelving throwing the room into multicolor glow and pulse, the glitter of sentimental keepsakes of old tech, older keyboards. Bro actually has an acoustic guitar, which he insists he's just keeping for a friend, but you know that Bro doesn't have any friends, and he probably can't play the guitar with only three fingers for the strings, and he might just keep it around to help test the prosthetic pinky-fingers he keeps upgrading, maximum dexterity training.

You strum the guitar sometimes in passing just to annoy him, because he's still YOUR BRO even if there is this new card in the deck of your routine that you assume answers to a Seasonal Heat.

So you carry on life as usual; strife, mission, rinse, repeat; except Bro answers your 'Heat' with nightly rigor, new routine, just another exercise to ensure your good health. And toward the end of that first week, as you're surfacing from the hollow-eyed subspace of your weep-gasm, you think, you imagine you can taste it in Bro, too, the - the uh, that raw sort of, sort of raw meat taste. Loss of control. A thread of sexual interest, a thin note on the air really, a guitar strummed in passing.

You're sat in a post-mission Taco Bell around 3 in the morning when Bro leans over the wreckage of his 40-pack hardshell genocide to say to you, "I scheduled a vasectomy for next week. We can stick to fingering until then."

You perform the meatiest, spiciest spit-take of your life, cramming a waxpaper wrapper in front of your coughing piehole. You bunch a fistful of cheap paper napkins against your face, like that's supposed to help your mortification or hide you or whatever. It'll never _not_ amaze you, the laser-like accuracy with which Bro dissects what you always assume are your innermost secret thoughts. You wanted your Bro to get it in you, yeah sure, but you didn't want to be a Texan cliche, pregnant at thirteen via cousin-fucking. "Cool," you say from under watering eyes, trying not to goddamn swoon.

Usually, and especially when you're strifing, when you're cut open and already going stiff in the limbs with bruises, you assume Bro really does want to kill you, but that he just can't, because he needs you underground. Now you're all but lamed from half the usual workload and Bro isn't trying to kill you harder, he's taking you to bed and letting you sleep in. You feel validated in a way you always sought, but you also feel valued in a way you never even imagined, and your chest hurts from the coughing or the swell of emotion or both. You wanted it to be true, that Bro's practical approach to the upkeep of your mental and physical health meant something, yeah maybe, and yeah maybe _it does_ mean something, maybe it's the thing you can point to when the world finally decides to turn against him, against you both, you can point to your theories, The Evidence, and you can take Bro's side, you can both fuck off to Mars or Asgard or Peru or wherever, because now you have proof that you're right about him, that he's a person and he cares.

Bro takes a weekend for the vasectomy, but doesn't fuck you proper until you're fourteen - and there doesn't seem to be any personal or emotional reason for that, just that the bloodletting routine up to that point worked fine and there was no pressing need to change it up. You suspect that Bro was keeping his head above proverbial water, too, since the hormone tags of interest were definitely present in his bed at night but that didn't mean shit if he didn't have no good reason to follow through on the urge, and your begging still didn't fucking count as any reason at all (but especially not a good one).

So you're fourteen and you're making breakfast in nothing so mega-glam as a t-shirt and boxers the day Bro leans over from his laptop at the flimsy kitchen table to bury his face in the small of your back, and that's a change from his usual obligated stoicism, but it's whatever, you're cool, you're not about to fall for it if this is a fake-out. Bro's wide hand hooks the inside of your thigh and this year is the happiest you've ever had or probably will ever have, because you're fucking John and you're fucking Bro, a surplus of affection after a lifelong dryspell. And Bro can probably smell John on you and his biology probably really goddamn approves, but that's also just, you know, whatever. Bro tugs your boxers down and lets them drop around your ankles like you're hiding a weapon, then leans from his chair to very casually bite the top of your ass, chin digging down into your crack.

You arch on the balls of your feet and lose your breath and drop the spatula; it's not your Heat (feral break, faux-heat) but the shirt you slept in has John's sweat all over it and the cloneDave that answered that morning's masturbation wept to recognize his longdead best friend on you, so you didn't even get to jerk off before breakfast and -

Brodie hikes his hand back up the inside of your thigh to tug your knee open, the hot hollow of his mouth pressing against your cleft, knocking your knee forward into the cabinets, your bare foot scuffing on kitchen tile. You cuss, giddy and delirious, chest burning and nipples gone almost painfully stiff, the heels of your palms braced between the bones of your hips and the unforgiving ledge of the countertop.

The eggs start to burn and Bro hauls himself up from the table to clatter the pan from the stove into the sink, then crowds behind you like he's gonna mount and you laugh, a dusky choked-off panic, because nothing Brodie does is any kind of spontaneous charity and this feels like a trap, like he's going to douse your head under the sink as punishment for letting down your guard. "Pedo," you accuse, soft Megan honey to your voice, because you want this so bad it's almost shutting you up.

"Says the brother-fucking redneck," Brodie volleys, and slaps the faucet on to calm the sizzle of the burning eggs, and doesn't dunk your head at all.

You hear the metal-tooth zipper of his denims descend, and every nerve lights with an _oh_ and a _hell_ and a triumphant _yes,_ the usual running background terror switched off its track like a snapped axle, your elbows locked straight to help pull your ass up, out. 

"Relax," Brodie demands softly around the mouthful of shoulder he'd taken to keep you still. He gets the blunt heat of his cock inside you with fits and starts, and it's easy because you're wet, you're almost always so fucking wet, and it's not easy because Brodie is big, he's big because he's tall because he's Alpha and you want him like the first thing out of the ocean probably wanted its gills back, burning in the lungs.

It's only a few quick thrusts that punch your breath out before Bro's knot drops, hardens, stretches your rim, and it hurts you to the point of soggy Ghibli tears but it's cool, it's whatever, it's like it would have been weirder if it _didn't_ hurt, really, because there wasn't a day in your life that passed without pain, pain was just the language of being alive, just the cost of growth and improvement, and if it didn't hurt then you wouldn't believe it was Brodie doing it and that's just the usual whatever.

And yeah, you're sub, you're a total bitch, you whine and moan and goddamn beg for it, please oh god yes, the whole spiel, but so what? You'll fuck John again later that weekend, take a jog across the country and climb in through his window to tug his computer chair back, wrestlemania-suplex him up over to his bed, maul those same noises out of him, repeat what Bro does to you, what Bro says or doesn't say, emulate Bro's confidence, wear the mantle of Bro's cool. 

You want John in ways it will take years to dissect, to understand. You want Bro in a way that's obvious and care-worn, in a way that you're almost already over, just because you've felt it for so long and there were no more revelations to uncover. It takes a couple heartbeats for you to actually feel the spunk Bro's still methodically thrusting up into your guts - it's a hot sting deep inside of you, like onion juice on papercut knuckles, but it soaks through your belly and chest until you're warm all over, tingly like your limbs fell asleep; then a buzz travels up your neck and knocks in the back of your head, a wash of hormone that you'd only ever sampled in spit and blood up to that point.

Your forehead hits the cabinets and you wonder what truck just stole your corspe from your soul mid-crosswalk, because you don't even feel alive anymore, because living is pain, is ache or hunger or low humming background fear; living is worry and want and disappointment so surely you're dead right now, full and light and painless, euphoric. You check over your shoulder with a sudden stab of panic, grip hooking back atop the brace of Bro's arms, scrabbling at his hands placed on the counter there. He doesn't feel real, this doesn't feel real, you can't feel your feet under you and you're scared you might be dead and you sob, once, but the sound of your own idiot voice snaps you out of your dissociation and you gasp-laugh, stomach cramping, a glance of the pain of being alive, a reassurance, a warning.

Bro's knot lingers and you can still feel his ramrod cock lodged in a place that isn't used to the occupancy and you cramp up for real, dropped back into your body, onion-sting in the rim of your anus going hot and tense because that knot is way too big even for a body in the throes of feral need (and you weren't even that, not this morning, and -)

"Don't fuss," Bro admonishes, and you weren't even in an episode, so right now you don't feel particularly wanting, you just feel hot and sticky, a little hungry and a little more nauseated, like you just snuck beer on an empty stomach. 

The knotting itself is tedious. Bro is wisely waiting for his body to calm before he can pull out, and in the meanwhile you're stuck there just breathing, facing down the evidence of your own gross animal ambition. The pain piques, redoubles as your body launches a formal protest against the invasion, a short, sharp grunt of frustration skipping past your control. You bang your forehead gently against the cabinet, three measured thunks, digging forward to try and ease some of your discomfort.

"Hey," Bro Commands, because you're fussing after he told you not to, and it's not a Thrall, exactly, but that one husked syllable runs up your spine and turns the hot sting of discomfort back into the warm soak of an approaching second climax. Your pores bloom open same as the capillaries inside of you, and the yank of your cramping insides starts to draw up, a coherent rhythm lent to the aimless flinching. You rock a little in place, cracked voice honking out every other stuttered breath, and go a bit blind when the orgasm pounces, fed by hormone upheaval and Bro's admonishing swat to the side of your flank.

The spasm of your climax kneads Bro's knot into response, and you're tall for a Megan but you're still only fourteen, so the cum has nowhere to go, especially because you are hard-muscled and whipthin, solid and unyielding. Something splatters the tile between your feet and you are distantly reminded of blood, of cavity wounds and nicked arteries, and you push back to try and inspect the floor, see if the blood is dark (bad, arterial) or light (still bad, tbh, but not arterial or organ or anything). You don't know what it is you're looking at, because there isn't any blood, not even with all the pain, it's just linoleum and your boxers around your bare feet, and linoleum-colored fluid half in those boxers, a whitish mucuous clung hot to the inside of your thighs, the heat from between your legs brushing up your chest and chin, fetid and doughy. Your own dick is lax but thick, the span of your hips red from the counter's edge. You study your toes, curl them to crack your knuckles, wag a heel.

Bro's weight shifts, and he has to lean forward to comfortably angle his knot down to a reasonable prise, and this shoves his mouth and chin into your hair, an unusual contact you mistake for affection.

You're a little sick and a little dizzy and hurt, somehow, when Bro's knot leaves you, like your asshole's return back down to size is worse than the trauma of the stretching, and it probably is, all that cum and slick heating your abused flesh on the way out, flat stomach rejecting the stretch of your bloated womb; and you're tense, you're almost always strung so tight, so it wasn't like there was any room inside of you for all your fear to fit without evicting the cum dump first. You clap your knees shut only to feel that Bro's cock is still half inside you, a contemplative linger, and you babble a nonsense query, voice high and thin.

"Nope," Bro answers, matter-of-fact, and yanks your ass back by the hips.

Your heel skids on the wet give of your soiled boxers and your elbow slams down against the edge of the sink, metal ringing hollow from the blow. You cuss and heave and blurt non-words, a name, someone's name, not God's name but the only god you know right now, right here in this moment with Bro fucking his half-hard cock back into the raw pucker of your shell. It hurts until it doesn't, and maybe that was Bro's goal, because you can't imagine he's getting anything out of this, jaw set and stare flinty.

"Here," Bro says like he's proven something when you slump to the cool countertop to join the puddle of drool getting fucked up out of your throat.

"Mm," you agree, limbs floppy, numb. This makes sense, in a way, driving you further into subspace than might be necessary - you're still sparring partners, after all, and could do real damage to one another in such close proximity, idling unawares. There was no expecting Bro to ever relax, around you or otherwise, so he'll make demands on your vulnerabilities, scrape everything out of you, knock you down to your base components just to wait around watching you build yourself back up. And this hurts, so you know it's somehow good for you, that he's helping you build up a strength, probably. You close your eyes and let your diaphragm tug the breath in and out of your lungs with every crowding thrust levied against you.

You're closer to fifteen the first time Bro kisses you.

He stops you under a streetlamp in an empty night-dark street to taste your health, the both of you dressed in post-mission sweat and scuffs. The taste turns into a mouthing linger, a nudge of chin and teeth and the sucking smooch that doesn't hurt you at all obviously, but it also somehow aches inside worse than being stabbed, like Brodie was denouncing the thing you used to be to one another, trying to replace it with some sad pale parody of normal affection, something common and sordid, petty in its expression.

You bite the side of Bro's lip with an anger that stalls out once you taste the blood from the night's wounds. You blink, really get a good inspection of Bro's face, the bruising, the swollen cut you'd just reopened. "Woah, sor--" 

Brodie interrupts your apology with a headbutt hard enough you actually see starburst, then wrestles you back against the cold pillar of the lamp post and laughs the laugh you've only ever heard him laugh when there are way too many bugs to get through and the labcoats have implied that they would just as soon shut you both in that hellscape than let you come back late. Brodie laughs, that low and loud and toothsome scoff, scent glands in his wrists running a wet press behind your ears, down your neck. Your eyes roll back, flutter shut, and your mouth drops open, hands snapping to Brodie's forearms so you can pull into his grip, bare your throat, hike a knee up around the bruising ribs of the thing you love most.

You won't kiss him back until you're sixteen, but that's whatever.

And all those memories are yours to keep, to bury under layers and layers of lies, excuses, explanations, unlikely stories. Sometimes you'll say you and Brodie aren't related at all, and it will be easy to believe, because nobody will know what Broderick looks like, how he walks, the way he holds a cigarette hovered half to his mouth to burn down to a column of ash, tobacco censer for the sanctity of his thoughts. You'll say you aren't related at all and that will excuse him, excuse you, from the bruises you put on each other, the fluids you swap, the whatever.

Except John wasn't related to his Dad and kept suppressed just fine, maybe got emotional and fragrant and feverish every month or so, as was expected; so maybe you'll say something like, well, Bro just wasn't around often enough for the familial bond to take, was a busy guy y'know, getting shit done, lots of irons in lots of fires, and you such a self-sufficient alien creature and with the robots to raise you, well, you might as well have been strangers, you and Bro. Regular ol' Oedipal mishap, no matter which fiction you'll file it under, related or not.

And the tiny blue matroyshka truth will wave her tiny wooden fists out from under the muffle of a dozen red shawls, and will declare: At nineteen Dave Strider never had a Heat, not a proper one, not anything worse than some fragrantly emotional trip to fevertown. You never lived a day out from under Broderick's ninja surveillance, touring or fighting or chilling at home, and stayed suppressed just fine... were it not for the Ferality.

* * *

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, unsung hero of the Houston underground, semi-professional DJ, strong independent (codependent) OMEGA, and you are SIXTEEN YEARS OLD the day your BRO puts you on the Widow Auction.

"Hey quick question what the fuck," you manage to choke around your mouthful of oatmeal, slapping the papers down against the kitchen table, out of Brodie's grip. The midday sun falls through the drapes of the tall livingroom windows, spilling into the open kitchen in stripes of bright yellow, dark drapery red, warm on tabletop vinyl, casting shadows that you and Brodie both feel a little more comfortable navigating, like you're vampires or trolls or something else.  
  
Brodie, leaning shirtless at the sink to try and get last night's mission out of his good wifebeater, shrugs. "Less hassle than you stayin' on the new-meg-reg. Fewer chumps wanna bother with a problem case, fewer phonecalls to the custodian who iced your last guy. Win-win."  
  
"Last _guy_?" You frown, and your breakfast goes down your throat a little thicker. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Brodie had killed someone - it's just highly fucking unlikely, because reasons. You know your Bro, you know he wouldn't, just because it'd be like an elephant taking irrational amounts of murderous intent out on like, what, like a housecat or something. Because, like a housecat to an elephant, a mortal human being could antagonize the Striders, sure, but it wasn't like they ever posed any sort of threat. More like a needling discomfort or audible annoyance, and it was still a mystery to you why Brodie ever even chose to do what the labcoats told him in the first place, except oh wait no it didn't Bro was just that cool and nice and awesome. "So... we get to hang out, like, indefinitely, or...?" You glance between the kitchen table and the apartment door, like someone is going to kick it in just to swat you with the rolled-up newspaper of reality, to wake you up.  
  
Brodie's mouth pulls back. "Thought you an' John were gonna start a Household on gig money, but yeah. You can hang out here, long as you need."  
  
And you savor the way Bro says John, two syllables, _jaw-uhn,_ and you would gladly bring Egbert in on the brother-fucking, just to hear that name from that mouth every day. Hell, Brodie could be the Head of House. "Yeah," you grunt, late, stunned. "Yeah, that's what we're planning. Just have to, uhm. Save up the cash, find him his bosslady, so." It wasn't exactly legal, two Megans to a House of their own - or even one Meg out on his lonesome. But what the fuck did Broderick care for legal? They could damn well _try_ to put you in jail, but. Pff.  
  
Brodie ferries a question through his pointed stare, bright orange eyes gone neon in a slant of sunshine.  
  
"No, yeah, I know, Egderp is never going to have enough game to get the Alpha of his dreams or whatever, but his Dad's got him off the Registry on a..? Work merit..?"  
  
Brodie frowns. The Striders were 'conditional employees' (prison wards) of the state of Texas, and Texas was traditionalist when it came to Family Court. 'Megs out at sixteen, forfeit to the Registry if they couldn't choose an Alpha by then, if their family didn't have the resources to find an upwardly-mobile match, in so many words. John's dad worked in the goddamn capitol, for a goddamn PARANORMAL INVESTIGATION branch of, what, the Feds, or. Something. He never specified.  
  
"So you're gonna wait til yer Pack numbers are up," Bro says, easing down to rest his elbows on the sink's edge, vigorous with the short bristle-scrub til the soap is foaming pink.

"Yeah." You stab your spoon at your oatmeal, considering for a beat. Your pelvis always gets a little tight and hollow whenever you talk about John, how much you goddamn love that goober, that you'd marry the first crusty old politician who asked, so long as they could afford John too, and maybe that was a pipe-dream but it was _your_ pipe-dream for as long as you could clutch to it.

But John did not, in fact, want to marry the first crusty old anything, and would never have to. "He's going to get on medication, for it. So he can go to work at his dad's office and not get, like, followed home or anything." The east coast was that much more progressive. John was that much more out of your range of upward mobility.  
  
Bro's scrubbing pauses.  
  
Bro's scrubbing picks up again. "Well." (Wull.) "You get a resumé in at Dadbert's office, y'all can get as medicated together as you wanna." He straightens, taps the brush against the sink, three loud bangs. "G-man Harley's almost got that closing sequence sorted. We'll be done with the portal keeping in a few years as projected, so, go ahead and get on with pinching them pennies." A nod at the table, your WIDOW PROFILE profile splayed beside the orange juice. "I bought us some time."  
  
You nod, but your gut is heavy, lungs leaded. The Auction would keep you from the State's sixteenth year rule, let you hang, let you get yourself sorted out but there was a term limit for bids and you, as a mysterious monster-fighting Strider, are juuust famous enough that someone rich enough was going to lobby their own win against all others, and well. 

Bro would never pick a fight with the State, but you can't ever see why not. He could own this whole fucking government, State to Federal, Parks and Rec to the Senate. He could own the world. "You could come to D.C., you know," you say, scowling at your bowl. "Stay Head of House. Would be rad."  
  
Brodie's forearms go all sharp and defined as he wrings his shirt out. "Incest ain't ironic, fagsneeze, it's just gross."  
  
You flinch, because that was always the joke, right? Next you'd call him a pederast or a homo or something. "Probably not even related," you mumble, breaking the pattern, just this once.  
  
"T'chuh," Brodie is rinsing his shirt, now, dousing the stain with peroxide to watch the browned edges of the blob perimeters fizz. "I knew you was mine first whiff, lil' man." He wags his chin, regards you with a lit orange glower from under the pale splay of his eyelashes. "Didn't even have to lay eyes on, but the ninja monkey shit confirmed it."  
  
You want to squirm, because Bro's tender nostalgia is always only ever the cruel reminder of everything wrong, off-color and abominable about you two - and you're sick to your stomach to reject that kind of affection, the right kind, the kind that used to reassure you, used to bandage your scrapes and tip cough syrup down your throat. "I guess," you croak, and if Bro so much as leans your way like he's gonna platonically pap your shoulder you'll deck him, but if he scruffs you rough and ready you'll probably cream. It's all that talk about John, about giving you and John some breathing room, got you kinda worked up, probably.  
  
Or it was Alphahood knot-envy, a smidge of jealousy that Bro could, if he wanted, just sell a few patents to afford a House, a Pack, and that his sheer force of personality could net him whomever the fuck he wanted. Whomever except John, of course, because John was pretty frankly against incest, directly or by association, for as severely as he's ever lectured _you_ about hitting on Dadbert, you unhinged thing you.  
  
Bro slaps his shirt in the sink, pulls a cigarette from the pack atop the microwave, lights up. You relent yourself to the comfort of the fact that Bro never submitted to any sort of gene test to find you two out for sure, just assumed legal responsibility on principal, kept you well away from any curious medical teams, took you to the free clinic to get your vaccines and didn't give them your documented name. You both exist in a limbo, Schrodinger's Lannister case, did they didn't they, will they won't they, everybody knows but nobody is allowed to say it - except nobody knows, and you say it at least twice a week.  
  
You've said it to John a handful of times over the years, too, and he's always laughed it off, like nobody who could beat you all to hell the way Bro did was anything but garden-variety abusive; like Bro's only issue was that he might not love you enough, not that he could love you in the wrong way.  
  
Bro ashes the cigarette, flips the stove vent on, drapes his ruined shirt over the stainless steel of the sink edge.  
  
"Gimme a tenner," you prompt, hopping up from the table, dishes clattering as your hip bumps the corner in your gangly haste. "I'll pick you up a four-pack." You grab your jeans off the back of the couch, start hopping one leg in at a time.  
  
Bro's jaw tenses, dishtowel working between his knuckles. "Beer comes into this household in packs of six, twelve, twenty-four or nothing. I don't do that cider shit."  
  
"Four-pack of shirts, jackass."  
  
Brodie sighs, but his expression doesn't soften. You suspect he resents it, how domestically 'Meg you've always been. Even as a kid you were the one who kept the house clean, did the laundry, procured what groceries you could fit in your backpack on what money you could wheedle out of him for it ('We'll just order take-out, leave the stove alone'). "Black, this time, if you're gonna bleed on me so much." Bro tugs his wallet out of his back pocket, unclips the chain, slaps the heavy leather wedge of it into your palm; and doesn't hug you or press his wrists over your neck for the trip out, doesn't pap your shoulder or scruff you over the breakfast table to mount, doesn't even look at you as you leave, cigarette cherry flaring bright and orange as he dips to buss the dishes off the flimsy card table.

-

It was probably a mistake, giving you the credit cards (no guessing which ones were maxed, gonna let you sort it out at the registers) because while you are well trained and you've been through enough serious shit in your life to have knocked the silly out of you, you're still only sixteen and you have the poor impulse control to prove it. You buy Bro a four-pack of black wifebeaters and a fourpack of white under-Ts, a sixpack of totally plain boxers (which he doesn't wear, unless ironically around the house, like Lisa Frank leopard print or offbrand Pokémon or that one pair with John Goodman's smiling face screenprinted over the front). You suspect that 'normal' and 'domestic' get under Bro's skin as so few things do - and you need retaliation just now, with very little idea as to why and even less incentive to guess.  
  
This should have been a good day, right? Good news? Brodie was going to keep you, give you some time to get some plans established with Egbert? This was the best possible way to have to leave your House, even if it had reminded you, suddenly, that you had to leave your House at all.  
  
You get Bro a patterned tie in neutral autumn colors, reasonably priced. You find a big'n'tall outlet on your phone's global positioning app and take a flash-jog down its highway to suss out a cheap, baggy button-down shirt in that weird office-drab blue that's hard to discern from white; and you find a pair of slacks - khaki, not denim - guestimating the size of Brodie's waist by how far you remember you can grip your own forearm when trying to tackle the center of gravity he carries in his hips. Just in case, you go half a size up and get him a belt, brown.  
  
You hand is nearly shaking with mischievous glee as you pay, backpack slowly filling out. The house-robe (terry cloth, full length, not kimono) has to go in your CAPTCHALOGUE, alongside the pair of fringed moccasins and the blue-and-white striped pyjama set. You only pause over the grilling apron, because Bro's retaliation could be just as bad, could go full-normie on your wardrobe (which wasn't _not_ normal but definitely didn't include any pastels), or could go high frilly Megwife, transparent novelty maid apron and all.  
  
Your heartbeat thunders through your skull. You buy the grilling apron and decide to cut yourself off, less confident now, less sure what the next step would be, should Brodie get this over on you, or how badly it would hurt if he didn't react at all, if he blinked flat and unimpressed and said thanks and actually started dressing like a normal person just to fuck with you.  
  
You hang a lunch at the nearest non-franchise, because Treat Yo'Self, but the head server is an athletic Alpha girl not much older than you who pays your bill and only hands you a receipt with her number on it and you very fiercely want John's witness for this. All of your, uh, everything, all those muddied emotions you were aiming at Brodie disappear to the goddamn winds. You're fed, relaxed, and now extremely goddamn flattered and you can't remember why you were pulling this bullshit on your Bro, because you liked his whole irony shtick, loved it even, admired his dedication and professional stamina, couldn't dream of becoming even half the performance artist he was, despite your own impressive mimicry of Certifiable Chill.  
  
What you were doing, picking a fight with the passive-aggressive over-domestication, man, that wasn't cool. 'Wrong size,' you explain to the cashiers, promising to return with your dad next time ('uhh, haha, brother,' you correct at least once, 'yeah no, just running an errand not buying like a gift or'). You keep the belt and the tie and the four black tanktops, and trade the terrycloth robe in for one your size, because that shit was comfy as _awl hale_ when you were trying it on.  
  
You get a pair of bunny slippers for you, a pair of alligator-face slippers for Bro, and feel a little less bad. You buy a wok for yourself, because it is on sale, post-seasonal-fad, and because Bro used your last wok to repair SquareWave's latest meltdown, payback for asking SquareWave to try and rap against The Iliad. The wok before that one had been punctured by shuriken, while greasy-hot broccolis toppled down your forearms and Bro admonished you about the fucking cooking, again, because it left your back exposed, absorbed your attention, diverted your battle readiness.  
  
Cooking was a discipline and an art and also a science, which suited Bro's Samurai warrior-poet philosophy just fine; but Brodie hated the way skin burns could limit mobility, and resented what he saw as your attempt to weasel out of strifing (but really was just your attempt to 'weasel out' of the vicious bouts of bacne his pizza fixation was fueling).  
  
You buy that frilly Meg-wife apron as a silent apology, self-flagellation no matter who ended up wearing it (and you wouldn't put it past Broderick, at this point, if it ended up on you or him or some goddamn puppet, or Sawtooth, or nailed to the wall like a museum artifact, under glass; here rests Dave's first and weakest attempt at an ironic gift, points deducted for obvious gender scarping). 

By the time you get back to the neighborhood, you want to apologize again for staying out all day, and pick up that 24 pack of beer after all. You check your phone as you wait in line with the box of beer balanced over your shoulder, stomach a little cold when you see that Bro neither texted nor called - which you've come to suspect as meaning you've been followed, which probably comes off as reasonable, given everything you know about yourself and your Meganhood and everything you know about Brodie and his single-minded paranoia.  
  
So what, so he watched you run around like a glitched-out Lucy Ricardo on a Ricky-themed scavenger hunt, and watched you then scramble-dump all those viciously aimed mundanity purchases back to their vendors, sure. So he saw you catch an Alpha's eye, saw your apology-shopping, wasted his day while you wasted yours, fine, whatever. The price to pay, being what you were, him being what he was; and it was better than not being allowed out at all, for fear some wily charmer might get their hooks in you.  
  
You expect Bro back at the apartment, chillaxed at the Xbox as if nothing was amiss. You do not expect him outside of the bodega in The Truck™, dry bloodstained shirt and all, one wrist over the wheel and one elbow out of the window, trucker hat low over welding shades.  
  
The Truck™ always _always_ means a long trip, to a mission or a week of shitty wilderness training and _fuck,_ fuck, you are _so_ being punished for the prank you didn't even get to execute, the purchases you backpedaled on, all that angst and recrimination and you still had to face the music just for the transgression of the idea (or even just because you backed out; Bro would be sure and let you know which lesson he'd be marching you up a mountain to learn, follow-through or forethought or fffff).  
  
You set the beer in the truckbed, wedging the large box of cans between the inlaid toolbox (full of weapons) and the wheelhouse (also full of weapons), and slap the plastic sleeve of undershirts on the truck seat between you as you sidle into the cabin, keeping the rest of the buys in your backpack, just in case this really was only a random call to mission and Bro has no idea the hell you've just put yourself through.  
  
"Border?" you hedge, tugging The Truck™ door shut. You don't bother with a seatbelt, backpack settled under the dash, feet settled atop.  
  
"Naw," Bro answers, and pulls The Truck™ into the lazy after-lunch traffic.  
  
"Hn. Something on American soil?"  
  
Bro shakes his head.  
  
Your hope is snuffed. Grueling bout of assbeatings in the forest it is, then.  
  
Your voice keeps its cool, even tone. You're good at this, at wearing the mask. It's the only thing you can do better than Brodie; what spare emotions he was ever given over to were swift and shortly lived, but honest and untamable. "Didja pack the 'DEX or are we going to make a pitstop for supplies?" You slap Bro's wallet atop the packet of shirts and cross your arms, jaw set. You're allowed to take this standing, you're allowed to act like you did nothing wrong, like you're going to benefit from this rousing jaunt through general to extreme discomfort, like this is a favor and not a retaliation. You're allowed to be chill, and probably not much else.  
  
Bro grunts low in the back of his palette, pale eyebrows up. "Guess I didn't think that far ahead. Wanna swing back to the apartment, grab some clothes?"  
  
You bite your cheek at the specification, _clothes,_ but you're being chill, innocent of all wrongs. "Yeah, let's do. Where we headed? Do I need a sweater?" You don't see so much as feel Bro looking you over.  
  
"Naw. Truck's got heat, even if the weather turns."  
  
Which might as well have been code for 'your ass is meditating under a waterfall for twelve hours, just bring something dry to shiver in on the way home'.  
  
You CAPTCHALOGUE a towel or three, once your leaden steps make it up to the apartment, Brodie dutifully at your elbow all the way up the stairs. Yeah, he definitely followed you around all day, if he's feeling this protective (with good reason, for a given qualifier of 'good' - you can protect yourself just fine; but while very few Alphas are the 'roiding rapists of the paperback novels, there are biological pratfalls that need consideration and Bro _is_ fucking you, however intermittently).  
  
"They got towels in the motels, D," Bro protests softly from his lean against the hallway corner, watching your scurry from bathroom to bedroom.  
  
"Can't take those towels with us," you remind, stubborn over your right to dry the fuck off whenever you want. Maybe you could sleep on them. Use them as a blanket, or a makeshift tent when Brodie inevitably fucks off to leave you to walk your ass back over the state line.  
  
"Insert Douglas Adams quote here," Bro mumbles, and you almost don't hear it, and you're a little startled when your racing anxiety stumbles to a halt long enough for you to make sense of, uh, it. The joke. The words.  
  
You let a chuff escape, automatic appreciation for a good half-assed popculture reference, but the scream that wants to follow, the bellowing demand to let you know just what the fuck is going on, that hurts your throat on the swallow down. Burns you. Clogs your ears. You want to joke about wilderness preparedness, insert boyscout joke here, insert pedo scoutmaster joke here, insert gay awakening at summer camp joke here. You shake the impulse buys out of your 'DEX and onto your bed to make room for useful things, extra weapons and a sturdy pair of hiking boots, your laptop and the external battery, the half-gone crate of apple juice you kept stocked in the bottom of your closet.  
  
"Ain't going nowhere you need all that," Bro says from your door. "Just a few clothes, dude. They got laundromats outside of Houston, too, you know, so don't go bugnuts."  
  
You pause your scramble and eyeball Brodie carefully, searching for a lie (he never... he never _lies_ to you - cryptic hints and sarcastic deflections if he wants to withhold, sure, but never any outright untruths). "So where are we going?"  
  
Bro shrugs, hands wedged under his arms. "Dunno yet. We're just gonna Go." He tilts his head, considering. "Unless you've got plans. I'm not gonna step on your schedule."  
  
Wariness keeps a choke-hold on dawning curiosity, and relief is but a distant refugee on the horizon.  
  
Brodie maintains steady eye contact and you can't let your tension break, not yet, but you can let your expression lighten, let him think he's got you optimistic.  
  
"Yeah?" you say, and set to packing the requested change of clothes. "Roadtrip? Is it your birthd--" your brain skips ahead of your bluster, counting dates, calculating months and seasons and patterns and dues. It's not your Heat, it's not, you wouldn't be allowed out of the apartment if it was, but.  
  
But.  
  
"--ay," you finish, late.  
  
Brodie doesn't answer, has pulled up his shades to squint at the sexy apron cradled in the wok.  
  
"That's John's," you lie, chill, smooth, easy. "For _his_ birthday." God, you're good at this. You almost always lie to Brodie, and he never (probably) lies to you, and it's something you're good at and can pride yourself on, quietly, the bitter-sweet kind of victory that can only be enjoyed so long as there's nobody there to witness it, because duh, that's the point of a lie. "I know it's not your birthday, man."  
  
"You don't know when my birthday ain't," Bro argues softly, and that's true. You know how old he roughly estimates himself, roughly estimates you, but your birthday is the day you fell to the Earth and you were already old enough to stand up and toddle around then, so, birthdays weren't really A Thing in this house. Bro has a date on a license in his wallet that doesn't mean anything, and you've got a date printed on a fake birth record, and.  
  
You don't want to say that you know Bro is nearing season. You don't want to mention his Rood, or the weekend trips he takes to figure that shit out on his lonesome, probably at the business end of a hellportal. You don't want to suspect that Brodie is actually going to fucking kill you, that he invited you along for a ride to the middle of nowhere special so he can furiously and repeatedly murder you the fuck out, your weird little Godhood invincibility popping you back up whole and bloodied and unsewn.

You've died before, but never at the hands of another person, and you are... distant, you guess, about the idea of dying in the face of Bro's sheer Alphahood Aggro. Lord knows you've had enough practice being put under the sword.  
  
That lone iota of relief that had been waving from the far horizon - you watch as a nuclear bomb sails lazily through the sky, and gently touches down atop that small waving scrap of relief, and your shades are lowered against the bright blast of that bomb's detonation, total annihilation of your last shred of optimism while you watch on, stoic, clothes and hair buffeted back in the hot winds of cosmically maligned fuckery and the flying rubble of your personhood.  
  
"Happy Birthday." You throw the gator slippers to Bro, underhanded. "I kinda went dutch on the Visa, blud, I'll PP you the dif." You are autopilot. You are chill. You are the win. You are the lie and the lying it is you. You aren't going to pussy out on this, you aren't going to back down or make up some excuse or question Bro's confidence in you, no. You're going to strife, and you're going to die, as often as Bro needs you to, until he calms down. It couldn't be anyone else. The Portals are being shut, at long last, and he'll have nothing left to kill but you, and you want to stick around and do that for him, and that's, eh, fine? That's fine. Not great, not ideal, but okay. You're okay. You're more to Bro than something lovable, because you're _useful._  
  
It's more than okay.  
  
It's... whatever.  
  
"Thanks." Bro wags the slippers, relents the doorway to toss them into his room. "Don't give Egbert that skirt, man, he won't get the joke."  
  
"It's an apron." You tidy away the last of your packing, half in the 'DEX and half in the backpack because the wider world generally expects a physical manifestation of luggage and it always looks suspicious if it's just you and Bro hucking across the wilderness with seemingly nothing in the way of provisions. "And it's not a joke; John's full molly for that Megan lifestyle catalogue shit. I'd be a bad boyfriend if I didn't foster his interests."  
  
Brodie just exhales audibly and takes his leave. "Make sure all the lights are out," he drawls from the apartment door, duffel bag slung over his shoulder with a cigarette-pocked windbreaker tucked atop.  
  
And okay, sure, you're not stupid, you know Roods mean fighting _or fucking,_ but you aren't going to torture yourself with that hope, either, since Bro's been kinda reticent lately if you try and touch him 'like that' and it's not your Heat (faux heat, Matroyshka Blue, feral break). You can't imagine a life where you're an Alpha or a Beta and you don't get to touch Bro _like that,_ or don't get to touch Bro at all - except to parry a blow or execute a totally ironic high-five. You feel a little sick imagining it, and spend the next hour or so of the roadtrip in mute contemplation of all the other Daves you've come to meet over the years, and how they looked at Brodie, wanting, wistful or wary.

-

"You square?" Brodie croaks from behind his cigarette, knee steadying the bottom of the steering wheel as The Truck™ barrels down the passing lane of the highway on cruise control. He thumbs down the blast of the FM.  
  
You tighten your grip on your phone, on which you'd been texting John over the merits of Omeganity in kinky lounge-wear, and the difference between Meg-wife and just plain ladygirl, and yeah Bro was right John definitely would not have Gotten It, The Joke. "You want an apron?" you reply with a shrug.  
  
Bro taps his cigarette against the ashing tray, passes it over to your grab-hand with a scoff. "Wear it once and then sell it to an internet perv."  
  
You grimace, because that's supposed to be a joke, but you also work for the State the way Prisoners work for the Highway Commission, for the gift of sunshine and fresh air and not much in the way of profit, and well. Bro has his side-gig with the smuppets, you don't wanna disrespect his hustle.

You cough, stub the cigarette out. "You smoke like this so you can't smell so much," you ask, but it's also not a question. "Man. What have you been trying to ignore, lately?" Because you know it's you he's been insulating himself against, and you kind of hate it, hate watching him fortify himself against the few natural advantages you've got, like you're never allowed to just _win_ every once in a while, fuck.  
  
"The taste of your shitty cooking," Bro answers evenly, and pulls another cigarette from the deflating pack. "Every time you pinch one off right before I gotta shower. That nonsense you put in your hair."  
  
"... Conditioner?"  
  
Bro's lip curls up, cigarette clenched delicately between his teeth. "'S a chemical, ain't it?" he growls around the fist holding his lighter. "You don't need perfumes and chemicals and shit in your hair, Dave."  
  
"If I didn't condition, I'd look like a demented weab. You need to condition, Bro, you're scaring dogs in the street."  
  
"You askt what I'm trying to ignore." Bro pulls the cigarette to life with a practiced puff, waves it as if to sage the cabin against your voodoo.  
  
"You don't usually smoke in the house."  
  
"I used to have my own fuckin' room in the house." Bro pointedly rolls his window down, dials the radio back up. "Why do _you_ smoke? Other than to look like a coolkid."  
  
"To make myself nauseated," you blurt, a lie, a retaliation. "Fuck, dude, I can't stand it either, all right? I get a whiff of you and I just have to be sick, but it won't happen, so I smoke half a pack, have a quick vom, feel like I've exorcised something, safeguarded my girlish figure as a bonus." You don't actually feel or do any of that, but you're scared that Bro might have an aversion to you, lately, and it's nothing to do with gearing up for a strife, and you want to beat him to the punch. You roll your window down, too, let the cold air of sundown sluice over your bare arm, grip your elbow over the truck door like you can steer the massive metal beast, like you have all the control in the world.  
  
Bro watches the road ahead, unmoving. He ashes his cigarette out the window, takes another easy drag, lets the smoke curl out of his nose, dragon-breath lax while his cheek flickers with the exploration of his tongue, fishing drive-through dinner from a molar maybe. He lets the cigarette tumble out from between his knuckles to dash its cherry out on the road, and rolls his window up. Dials the radio down.  
  
You roll your window up, too, desperate to hear a response, a change of subject, a casual insult, anything.  
  
Brodie thumbs the heat on, and his voice feels loud in the sudden purring quiet of the vents. "I slouch to cut down on the flow of blood to my brain."  
  
You've seen Bro stand straight, heard the vertebrae pop and crack as he forced himself to his full height, like a saiyan unlocking its final form to kick boss - the first time you'd ever seen this was the first time you'd died, just outside of a hellportal. The second time was when Bro went to court to testify as witness for some asshole chemistry geek who got put away despite the effort. Sometimes Bro woke up with better posture, all needled and easy to startle, but would sink back to his haunch within the waking hour, calming.  
  
He continues, "When I stand, it all gets to feelin' like that Pandora Box, like knowin' way too much all at once, like I gotta just stuff those monsters back in and get the lid shut." His hands tighten on the wheel, biker gloves squeaking. "Gets to feeling like a Godhood, like I could know so much I just dissolve, just stop existing apart from everything," he laughs, wet-sad, teeth a glimmer. "And I gotta keep that all out, so I can focus, so I can stay put together. Gotta keep my head cleared of that multi-existential garbage, gotta keep my head _down."_ You know that Bro is the same sorta something as you, and you know what your deal is, but you don't know what Bro's deal is - he doesn't have timeline clones, hasn't died and popped back up (as far as you're aware); he just gets migraines and (apparently) knows everything there is to know in the universe, poor bastard. Bro pulls his welders off, trades over for the green poker shades, knocks his hat off to scratch the style back into his hair, though he makes it look like an earthy comfort move and not an obvious give to peacocking.  
  
You shift in your seat; safe from the sun, now, you peel your aviators off similarly, trade in for the tinted readers. "I didn't know that," you offer, instead of a weak stab at sympathy.  
  
"And I'm sorry you didn't know that, D." Bro middles the volume of the radio, a weather report, important maybe. "I'm sorry I don't explain myself proper, but it's never really your problem, okay? Whatever is going down with me, on my end, that's not something you have to worry about, but I'll tell you if you want to know, all right?"  
  
Your admission feels wooden, sticks in your throat, "I always want to know." Heated, now, angry with remembering, "I _always_ ask you. I always ask, what the _fuck_ -"  
  
"And I'm gonna start tellin' you," Bro interrupts, voice edged with warning. "Because you're old enough to know. It weren't fair, dropping that Auction down in yer lap without a word of warning. You didn't have to fuck off, I'm not trying to get rid of you."  
  
"Then why do you smoke!" you snap, kicking a foot up on the dash, pressing yourself back into the seat to help muffle the tension of your fury as you strangle your backpack. This isn't about smoking, not really; it's not, but. "You give me all these half-ass answers, all these jokes like - okay, like yeah, like it doesn't matter, like I'm not supposed to worry about anything, about you, on your end -" you laugh, low and cold, "And believe me, dickweed, I _don't fucking care;_ I don't worry about your ratchet ass, I just want to know - !" If it's you, you need to know if anything you do has any affect on Bro, at all, if there's anything you can change, that would ultimately change him, make an impact, if he would even _notice_ -  
  
"It's fun," Brodie begins, and you are mystified that the peanut gallery has whittled Broderick's public image down to 'stoic gargoyle of inevitable evil' because he is none of that, not stoic, not evil (or not ambitious enough to be evil, anyway), and goddamn overclocked on emotives - wry, drawling, sarcastic, biting, sure, but also petty and testy and bitchy too. Sometimes he laughs, sometimes it's actually in a spirit of humor. Sometimes he - "It tastes good. It's a stimulant. I got a hand-mouth fixation. I wanna look cryptic and cool and self-destructive, is that what you want to hear?" Sometimes he emotes and it's this weird crackle behind his voice, not quite a growl, and then he usually fucks off for a weekend of bare-knuckle bet-winning, or biker bar debauchery, or something, and his Roodfever will break, you guess, and he'll come home and light a cigarette and pay some bills.  
  
Brodie is waiting on your answer, but you're stuck in the mud on all of this, stuck in your own listless anger, too wise to the machinations of these arguments, their futility. You're always wrong and Brodie's always better than you assume and it always just fucks you right up.  
  
"No," Brodie concludes to himself, grin twisting up close-lipped. "Nawp. That's not what Dave wants to hear, because that's got nothing to do with Dave, around whom the whole world's gotta fuckin' revolve." He scoffs to himself, head shaking, and turns his chin sharply your way, watching the road. "I smoke because I took it up at a restaurant overnighter that went easiest if I weren't falling asleep at the sink, and I just never put it down because nicotine is an addictive substance. My brain gets addicted, D, just like anyone else's. It gets hungry for caffeine and sugar and salt, sometimes, and will murder me if I ever quick the tobacco, Dave, okay? But that isn't what you want to hear?" He checks you, eyes mostly on the road, taking an exit ramp with all the control and ease of impartial autopilot.  
  
You're a bit frozen, but also a bit completely fucking relaxed, thumb on your STRIFE deck in the pocket of your cargo jeans, expecting all the violence of a building Rood, smelling it fill the cabin, Brodie's salt and leather and computer-tower ozone, the bitter orange oil tang of conflict, not comfort.  
  
"No?" Bro's smile flashes again, falls. "What do you wanna hear, D? That I smoke so I can't smell _you,_ can't smell your wet fuckin' panties every time we sit down in the same room?"  
  
You tap the butt of your sprung sword on the dash, a single loud rap, like a gavel, and you are wearing Strider brand violence in your eyes, in the lazy slope of your shoulders, in the tilt of your chin. "We doin' this?" you husk, robotic flat, apple-cider vinegar in the air.  
  
Brodie looks twice. "Not on the fuckin' Interstate we're not, you _horse's ass_ -"  
  
You expect something theatric, some skidding off-road drift, the scream of tires thrown into park, tuck-and-roll, highspeed shove-and-dodge, some roadside woodland chase or a moonlight showdown, someone gets slammed in the dirt, and the fight crescendos and maybe you get the anxiety fucked out of you at the end of it or maybe Bro throws himself in front of a train for the mangle he makes of your invulnerable corpus or maybe you both walk out in front of a train (probably after the fucking, let'sbereal). But your sword disappears from your hand (how is he always faster, _how),_ there is a loud clank and Brodie elbows the back window open, tosses your sword - now two pieces, neatly snapped in half, sheath and all - into the truckbed.  
  
Brodie's accusatory finger invades your space, the strong fucker (you aren't that strong, you're fast and you're invincible and you're legion but you are never going to be able to do what Bro does) and you manage not to recoil. "Don't ask questions you don't actually want answered." Bro elbows the back window shut with a deft sliding clack, shutting the wind out, shutting you both in, the riotous clash of sour fear and heady provocation.  
  
Your brain is left to the manic hamster wheels that usually pick up the slack whenever Broderick has defeated your objective reality with his manifestation of other-world absurdity. "Why do you fuck me," you volley at the empty space in your curled hand where your sword used to be, aiming to wound. "If you hate it so much."  
  
"It's fun," Brodie answers, parries really, same tone as he did talking about the cigarettes, dismissive, challenging. "Tastes good. I got a fixation. My brain will murder me if I ever stop. I'm not lookin' to settle down and start a flipper-baby circus with you."  
  
You exhale. It feels like relief, but distant. You curl your empty hand, and can't cry, and can't vomit, so full up with longing, all brimming over with void. He's still joking, the ass. The Truck™ takes another sloping exit ramp, for fuel and probably a motel room that you aren't allowed to destroy with Jackie Chan shenanigans. "Why do you fuck me, B," you ask at the silence of a red light. "If you - if it's not." You swallow twice. "If you don't love me like that."  
  
Brodie glances sidelong. His chest rises and falls, a silent sigh. "Baby elephant metaphor."  
  
You wait, empty fist clenched.  
  
Bro continues, "Remember that border town that sank? We had to collapse the sewers, get those portals blocked off because there were too many of the bigger fuckers chasing us through?"  
  
"Odeza."  
  
"Remember how many people died?"  
  
You shrug. It seemed like something Bro had protected you from, didn't exactly hide the death toll but definitely didn't sit you down to hash it over. "I was twelve." Like that was eons ago, and not four short years. "You never told me." You saw the bodies in the chalky rubble, like puppets without their strings, dark raspberry jam, strawberry mince, it was just karo syrup and food coloring, it was just a movie; that was a wax mannequin, it was prosthetics, burned meat from off a thousand faulty grills. That's all it was. You didn't cry.  
  
"Close to three thousand confirmed dead, seventy-two hundred injured, twelve hundred to die from those injuries. Thereabouts."  
  
The light turns, a wide wet swath of green across blacktop. You grunt, knowing how many more would have died had the chronusbugs gotten loose of the perimeter. The whole world, probably. "Kay." You'd died maybe five times in your life by then, and found it difficult to feel much of anything about the tragedy, like an actor on a set, behind-the-scenes. After a while, it all just looks like so much prop, animatronics and makeup. After a while, your brain just sort of tells you a story, plays you a film, lets you sleep well and eat regular and fuck your brother in the downtime.  
  
Brodie crawls The Truck™ through its turn from intersection to corner-station, tucks it neatly against its chosen gas pump, keys the engine off. He's usually quiet, doesn't stretch words, doesn't waste energy on smalltalk or pointless questions or anything - but when it's time to talk, Brodie monologues like a pro, ideas broken up to their simplest components, pared down and translated into Terran Peasant. "When the circus has to train elephants, they gotta convince two-ton panicky animals that they're still only twenty pounds of clumsy.

"Elephants can kill, on purpose or by accident, so you gotta tell them, convince them that their keepers are always going to be taller, stronger than them, that their boundaries are permanent. You tie a baby elephant's leg to a staked rope from the start, it struggles maybe a day, maybe a week. But for the rest of that elephant's life, even just the feel of a rope around its ankle will keep it stuck in place; it won't even try to unlearn what did it such a good lesson foremost." Bro tugs The Truck™ door open, slides out with his wallet in hand, cabin dipping up at the loss of his dense weight. "And the commands of its keepers," he continues from the airy white noise of the cement-bound station, "Who used to be so much taller and stronger than that baby elephant, will as easily command that two tons of happy goddamn murder forever on."  
  
This isn't... anything you expected to hear, anxiety frozen down to shame. You fidget, feeling a bit stupid. Like, yeah, you were a badass, but Bro never really let you in on that, never really built you up about it - the opposite, in fact - and? Probably with a good, sort of, intention? He didn't get anything out of a being dick, unless it was a direct provocation for you to retaliate; but he did a damn clear job of keeping you humble.  
  
Brodie's voice continues on, an off-frame narration as he putters around the gas pump, gets to filling the tank. "If we had it any other way, D. If we ever had the chance to live some sorta peaceable life, if you were never destined to grow up a two-ton threat, sure, I probably would have never tied you down with that rope." He leans against a cement pillar like it hurts to stand, like you really had landed a wounding blow. "I know this makes me the bad guy. But cruel ringmasters only ever, what, lose their elephants? Go to jail? Killer elephants get put down, D. They ain't never going to waste me away in a cell for kiddy diddlin'; I'm too valuable. But you," He whistles low and loud, gas pump clunking its signal end. "Well."  
  
"National Guard told us to collapse the supports," you protest mildly, because it was an old hurt for the Houston PR.  
  
"Yup. And National Guard got its day in court to cover for it, said it was a naturalized earthquake brought on by an escaping pocket of methane, not you and all three-hundred of your timeskip clones." Brodie clatters around the side of the truck, shakes the gas pump handle in the tank mouth, recovers the handle to its stand, plucks his card out of the reader. "Didn't reckon you was Meg, growing up, but I knew you was gonna become two hands of trouble if I let you. So I put the hurt on the baby elephant, and that's not an excuse, it's just a motive."

He fills the open doorway of the cabin, green shades sloped down his long nose to watch you, earnest. "But you _are_ Meg, and that's my good luck, 'cos now you'll mind whatever keeper I give that rope to, which is a promise on you staying allowed to live, outside my custody. So that's your good luck, too."  
  
"Who uh," you hazard, from the buzzing pressure of your shock, nearly deaf to your own words. "Who tied your leg, when you were a baby elephant?"  
  
"Nobody." Bro retakes the driver's seat, slams the door shut a little too hard, cabin rocking. "And I got myself in trouble pretty much immediately, didn't I? And I would have been scrapped by the People In Charge, except they had a crisis they needed to throw me at, instead. My good luck." He reaches for your head as if to ruffle your hair but -  
  
"Don't," you croak, tilting your head out of reach, because you can't stand nostalgic tenderness, not now.  
  
So Bro starts the engine, instead, and trundles The Truck™ down the byway with eyes out for a tall blue motel sign.  
  
"They couldn't have scrapped you," you argue quietly at the reflections passing over your window, the lingering onion of gas in your hair, in the back of your throat. "You could have taken over. You could have done anything you wanted."  
  
Bro wheezes, once, venting smoke. "Maybe. Knowing what I know, now, I might even want to, sure."  
  
You perk, and something in your chest _flies._ "Why don't we just _do that?_ Plenty of shit wrong with this world that could do with some Striderian medicine."  
  
The Truck™ lists as it turns into the motel parking lot, like the world is rotating on the axis of the cabin, your eyes glued to Brodie's beaky profile. Bro shrugs. "Conquest is a constant state of conflict. You ever get that wild hair up your ass to start runnin' shit, you make damn sure you've got someone as can kill me, first, because I'm never going to let you do that to yourself, Dave; never going to let you get away with that bullshit, and sure as fuck never going to subject myself to that whole entire type of clusterfuck."  
  
You don't get it. You don't get it and you're mad that you don't get it, drowned under a fathom of shock. "I'm already living in a constant state of conflict, Bro, _what is the goddamn difference."_  
  
Brodie parks, yanks the keys out of the ignition, taps both wrists down on the steering wheel, knuckles white in their clench. He exhales, a punch of air from the back of his nose. "And I know you're going to keep on living in conflict even if we get them portals gone, because there's always going to be some chump thinks they know they deserve to be running shit, and there are always going to be people as who refuse to be run, and you're always going to be on a side of that, on some side of history, y'hear? Doing what you do, because you were born capable enough to do it."  
  
You're still too dissociated to be properly upset, but, "Nature versus nurture, man, whatever I was _born_ to do. What are you trying to say, here, exactly?"  
  
Brodie's sigh carries a note of conclusion. "I'm saying that you were born to Godhood on a Godless goddamn planet, cowpoke. You're mine and you didn't really have a say in _being_ mine; you were my elephant to raise, and that's not your fault. That's my bad, D. You don't want out of my House, you don't want out of the fighting, and you _don't_ want awla that so badly that it sounds like you'd rather start some wars with some semi-innocent world governments just for the excuse to stay by my side. And that's my rope around your ankle, that's all the shit I've ever done to you to keep you in line, that's on me."  
  
_What,_ you mouth behind the loose curl of your fingers, elbow on knee, ribs shaking. "What. So."  
  
Brodie exits The Truck™ to drop his cigarette, leaves the driver's side door ajar, cabin overhead alight, shuffles around the truckbed to lift out his duffel. "So," he husks from the open door, reaching in to grab up the packet of undershirts. "Two things, you on the Auction and all." The shirts are stuffed in his duffel, cigarettes swiped from the dash. "I'm giving you some rope, but not enough to hang yerself. You go where you want and when you wanna, and you find yourself a House that's good for you an' Egbert. Go as far as D.C. if you need to. We'll get notice on missions, and if you stay in my House then you can expect the usual amount of assbeats, wake-ups 'n all."  
  
"And the second thing?" you hiccough.  
  
Brodie lets his wrist hang over the door, hand braced on the hood of the cabin, gargoylic. "It's fun for me, Dave. Tastes good, and I don't wanna stop. There's no good reason to stop, nothing and nobody who could stop me from it. It's a bad habit; I know that. Could hurt people who get too close to the second-hand, could hurt me. Could hurt you. Could stunt something in you; probably already has." He tamps the heel of his palm against The Truck's™ door frame, contemplative. "They're not gonna kill me over it, not even gonna lock me up. Might take it away from me, or I might just give it up, eventually."  
  
You close your eyes.  
  
This isn't about cigarettes.  
  
For once, you Aren't Saying It Out Loud. It's not a joke, it's not some tragic truth you get to pummel out of each other, it's now as unthinkable as it is unsaid, delicate, untouchable, fragile.  
  
"You should do what you want," you croak, voice all a-crackle, Omega strain. "But don't ever say you're addicted, that's a cop-out. You got more discipline than that."  
  
"Hn," Bro grunts, impressed, and pushes off the truck, closes the door gently, shuts you in the dark.  
  
You're texting Rose (it's the UK's time to be awake) when Bro returns from the motel reception, and you keep texting Rose because the hamster wheels of your autopilot don't know how to do anything else, right now, when Bro opens your door, tugs your backpack from under your leg, hooks it over his shoulder. He leaves your door open, cabin overhead lit, and hefts the case of beer from the truckbed to his hip.  
  
You follow from The Truck™ in a slump, and you have to shut the door twice because your limbs are so heavy, joints cramped, guts watery. Rose thinks you'd look okay in apron frills but they wouldn't exactly suit your image and you have to agree, think you're really more a tight black leather lounge-wear kind of Meg. Rose disagrees again, says you're more the naked-under-a-baggy-sweater type, and she knows you so well (despite your best efforts, haha) that you're crying inside a little, thumbs slipping over typos, _goinna-hangg-out-with-bro-now,,-gn.ight._  
  
Objectively, you know Bro got a room with a single bed because it was the cheapest, and there was always a pull-out in the closet, and it's not like he ordered a Bower Suite, not like there was a whole stack of body-length pillows with washable throw-covers piled up on a giant floor nest, no, it was just a room and a normal queen-sized bed and the cot already half pulled open. You are sad, probably, or disappointed, or guilty. Tomorrow Bro's Rood will be worse, and you'll have to drive and argue and park somewhere to throw down, probably, or to cool off or just -  
  
"Is it cool if I take the bed?" The gremlin that lives in your head demands, picking a fight.  
  
Bro just eyes the pull-out, and tugs his undershirt off. "Contrary to the sitcoms, D, Alphas don't like bratty Megs. Save the vies of dominance for yer Egdork."  
  
"Just 'cos I take knot doesn't make me a bitch." And you feel this truth put steel in your limbs, walk you over to the other side of the queen-size, where you start to toe off your shoes. "I'm taking the bed, weab. You can join me any time you wanna get over your bullshit." Your voice never breaks. This is your greatest skill among the set. You are penultimate chill. You can't hear Bro's reply over the static white noise of your own rabbiting pulse.  
  
So when you retell some of this story, lies wrapped up in pretty red shawls, you'll always start you and Bro off at your sixteenth year - not entirely because of the whole weaponized pederasty thing (though that was enough of a reason, really, god you're not _stupid_ ), but because you were sixteen when you went on the Widow Auction, when Brodie put you on the Widow Auction to keep you close just a little bit longer; you were sixteen when The Fucking overstepped its boundaries from utilitarian Heat suppression and ironic antagony to anytime-the-mood-strikes, when the mood really began to strike, hard, pretty goddamn often, and you would say that Bro was reluctant, and -  
  
You'd give it all up: your music career, your hobbies, your friends, if you ever had to. You'd burn the whole world down for Bro's safety, and that may or may not have had anything to do with the metaphorical rope he tied around your leg, because you'd save the whole world, too, at your brother's word - to the credit or blame of how he fucking raised you; you a literal God among men, fallen from the sky to the cult of nothing and the worship of no one, immortal, innumerable, invulnerable, taught by trauma to see dead bodies as abstractions of form, nothing to get sad about. There will just be more people exactly like those later on, doing more people things; everything Never Stops Keep Happening just because an 'individual' isn't living out their timeline anymore - they were still living out their timeline in the past, still had an infinity of alternate timelines in which they could carry on, everything _never_ stops keep happening, sure, but if they ever took your awesome Bro away from you then this planet would goddamn wish for its own end.  
  
Bro snaps the bedside lamp off and sits bare-ass to the side of the mattress to kick out of his jeans while you pull down your half of the sheets, claiming space in a kneel even though you aren't undressed, nervous that Bro would just sprawl out and crowd you off if you didn't stake some territory. There's also something wrong in the idea of stripping down to present yourself - usually it's Bro who shoves your trousers or your briefs out of the way, leaves your shirt to your modesty, gets his dick in with nothing like the Hollywood ritual of foreplay, mechanical and only a little dispassionate. Bro prefers to be nearest to nude because he's a big dude who burns a lot of calories in the heat of the south, so it's never any kind of special when he loses a shirt or keeps to a pair of novelty boxers around the house or collapses into bed in nothing but his scars.  
  
You want an oversized sweater, big and soft to be naked under, and you want John squirming back against your dick, Brodie inside you, and you _want_ -  
  
You're both so pale you nearly glow in the dark, the blue digital read of the bedside alarm clock the only light to go by, cutting shadows into every dip of Brodie's body as he slides under the sheets, as his chest lowers in an exhale and yeah, he's crowding in on the middle of the bed already, arm splayed out to tuck up under both pillows, legs shifting over diagonal to the mattress so he can fit, not hang off any edges.  
  
You're stuck on your knees, barefoot in your jeans, baseball T stilled halfway up your stomach, stuck in place because Brodie's Rood smells like malt and gear oil, drifts down into creamsicle orange, his mood relaxed here in the dark on the drowsy comfort of an oversoft commercial mattress, butter-salt melancholy nested in the concerned umami, the bitter tobacco tannin of, what, you don't know what that is, that emotion, you can't tell, he's usually so contained, steady, three-note Alphahood.  
  
"You didn't invite me along just to kick my ass or anything, did you," you ask, because it needs asking, and let your shirt lower back down, warm over skin that's started to vent.  
  
There is a long, terse pause where you can't hear Brodie breathing, then; "I was going out of town tonight. You were out all day, didn't get the chance to discuss the things needed discussing. Two birds."  
  
"Why don't you ever, just, um." You bend forward at the waist, press your cheek into the bed, unbutton your jeans to shove them down your thighs, inhaling a sharp hiss as a string of slick drags from the denim and the leg of your briefs down the back of your thigh, wet and hot like an open kiss. Your knees shift, walking out of your pants, toeing them to a heavy crumple to the floor. "Stay home? For when you're like this?"  
  
"You handle the laundry, don't you?" Bro answers cryptically as ever, and this almost feels normal.  
  
"I'm not going to hump your laundry, chucklefuck."  
  
Bro exhales. "Rood's a lot harder to get out of the sheets than Heat, _conejito._ We can't afford the soap."  
  
You crawl under the bedcovers in your shirt and briefs, eyes winched shut against what kind of maniac you must have looked like, bringing all those towels. Your shades clatter to the nightstand. You tug a pillow out of Brodie's monopoly, turn a hard lean into his side, back pressed flush into his ribs, presenting. "Guess that's to do with territory marking. Should be fine to just leave it. You live there after all."  
  
"Naw, D. I feel better if people can't track."  
  
"Right," you drawl. "Your whole IC Ninja cosplay." And here you're supposed to feel a little sad, probably, but it's an old story. You wash the laundry, you use the good soap, you don't want to be tracked either. "John's house smells like Dadbert. It basically lets him hang out on his own, when he's Heating." Too late you realize the mistake, the implication.  
  
Bro hums, skin scuffs skin in the dark, scratching an itch. "You want me to leave you alone for your Heats?"  
  
"No," you answer evenly, chill. Egbert kept suppressed in Dadbert's household, sure, but you are under the impression that you've never been suppressed in the first place (and the small blue truth of it is, of course, that you're suppressed just fine, but-)

The front of your stomach feels jittery, knees tight, the scars on your chest prickling under your shirt, Bro's every draw of breath moving the ribs at your back. "Hey, uh," you turn your chin to try and get an eye of Brodie behind you, foot wagging, restless. "So long as you're offering favors?"

Bro snorts. "I'm the one about to feel like seven shades of shit, D, you should be doing _me_ some favors."  
  
You fidget some chip crumbs from under a shallow fingernail, then pull yourself forward, away from the stifle of Bro's body heat, and out of the bed. "Kay. Want a beer?" You stretch, then swipe at the back of your thigh, wipe the wet on the side of your shirt, careless with your scent, a little vindictively.  
  
Brodie grunts, overtaking your vacated space with a subtle stretch. "I wanna know if we're cool, yet. Are we cool, Dave?"  
  
"In a pig's eye; you killed my fictional husband," you snark, padding to the small amenity-crowded bathroom. "Did you pack a toothbrush?"  
  
"Naw. Usually buy a travel kit." But he was too busy arguing with you on the drive up.  
  
You swipe a beer from the box, instead, and crack it open to swig a mouthful around, swallow with a grimace. You use the sleeve of your shirt to scrub some of the roadsnack fuzz from your teeth, swish some more beer, wince at the sting of the alcohol. You turn half out of the bathroom door to offer the rest of the beer and catch Brodie's stare. "We're cool," you rasp, "if-"  
  
But there's no good way to say it, so you set the beer on the bathroom counter and shift your weight and wait.  
  
Bro grunts a prompt, shuffles to reclaim the second pillow. "Whatchu need, _cielito?"_  
  
You can't even summon some sort of joke to hide it behind, brains as fried by the day as they were. You tamp your weight between your heels and the balls of your feet, jittering there in the gloom. "We're cool if we're cool, because I'm fine, my guy." You grip your elbow, scoff out around a grin. "I'm fine with any night you're not handing me my own teeth on a tarmac platter." You swipe the beer up and saunter to the bed, made brave by remembered indignity.  
  
Right. There were worse things than being embarrassed, real and actual hurts that had already gone down between you two, and if a rejection was in your future then that rejection would at least contain itself as far as the walls of the ironclad history between you. He couldn't break up with being your other half on a planet of meta-humans and mundanes, and hardly wanted to break up with being your Alpha.  
  
Bro was just... giving you rope, he said. Rope to walk away, as far as DC if you wanted. Rope to lasso you an Egdork, find a serviceable Head of House, or.  
  
Rope to tie Brodie down with.  
  
"Beer," you prompt, and balance the can on the flat of Bro's sternum, sitting down on his side of the bed, your hip to his ribs, knee tucked up toward his head.  
  
"Put it aside, D," Bro dismisses quietly, and yawns.  
  
"Alcohol is an astringent, _naranja._ For your breath."  
  
Bro accepts the can, twists towards you to get up on an elbow, takes a long draught. "Should get that tattooed," he says with a slight wheeze, a single cough, and knocks the rest of the beer back to finish.  
  
"What, a toothbrush with like a beercan for the bristle-head part?"  
  
Bro curls forward to set the empty can in the middle shelf of the night stand, shaking his head. "'Naranja'. Half-orange. Kind of a pun, ain't it?"  
  
You hum. "The best spanish diminutives are. Did you call me a rabbit because I'm, what, white with red eyes? Horny? Fluffy? Help me out here."  
  
Bro's shoulder jerks with a silent scoff and he uncurls back to the pillows, sighing. "The term means 'fast', not as in 'romantically forward' but as in clever or quick to pick up social cues, and had been used in a spirit of sarcasm. I was calling you stupid, about the laundry. What was that favor you wanted ask, just now?"  
  
Avoidance snares the thin lace veil of your motives and you quip, "You just called me the southern equivalent of a snowbunny, which is Canadian slang for sporty mountaineer in DayGlo who likes to fuck, and is a deadly goddamn insult."  
  
"Mnyeah, well," (wull) "Ain't feelin' hundred percent right now. 'M allowed to _faux_ some social _pas."_  
  
You stop the bouncing of your knee, still half off the bed. "Does it hurt? Your uh, seasonals?" After a moment's silence, you add, "You said you'd tell me what's going on."  
  
"Dunno," Brodie confesses quietly, then lurches toward the far nightstand to catch up the TV remote, and thumbs the room's large flatscreen on. "I don't know if you'd call it a hurt. It's a low-key sort of flu, makes everything intense and shitty."  
  
You slide into the vacant bedspot Bro has leaned away from, into Bro's residual body heat and the spreading pocket of his off-mood citrus and he startles when he almost lays back into you.  
  
A breath punches past the back of Bro's nose and he slides his elbow against your ribs, nudging but not pushing. "Dave, out. I didn't bring you here to knock you up."  
  
That almost startles you out of bed, but Brodie isn't shoving you off onto the floor yet, so. "Woah, wait, what," you husk, cooldude personified. "Thought you got snipped, Lassie." Which is... okay, so it's almost sort of Talking About It, about you two, but it's also not, because nobody's been insulted, nobody's been called anything criminal or pathetic or morally bankrupt. It's just you and your Alpha doing some family planning, totally normal.  
  
Bro flicks through a few prime-time channels before landing on the public access doppler radar and its soothing robotic report caster. "Only 98% promise on the effectiveness of that, brorito." And ah, fuck, he was back to calling you sibling-adjacent nicknames. "Probability tanks with Rood, 84 to as low as 60."  
  
You can't crack a joke about that, about elevated Alpha hormones and sperm count, and don't even want to for once, which is a weird sort of sobriety anchored in the floor of your lungs that warms you all the way down to the clench in your groin. The radar readout announces high winds and overnight thunderstorm with mild chance of tornadoes forming in the easternmost county and you try not to think of John and that Windything he can do as you slide yourself out of bed.  
  
"Where's your wallet," you prompt, shoving the bundle of blankets and sheets back over Bro's prone sprawl. "I'll go get condoms."  
  
"What was that favor you wanted, earlier?" Brodie says, instead of answering.  
  
"Give me the wallet so I can buy you that travel kit," you revise, instead of answering.  
  
Bro audibly sighs, and you watch his arm drape over the side of the bed, and you barely catch the heavy pair of jeans flung your way. "Was that the favor?" Bro asks, voice flattened by doubt.  
  
"Yeah," you lie. "I mean I have my own capital, just didn't bring with."

"Don't hang 'round the truck stops for it, D, I don't want to have to chase some freighter into Canada 'cos you got snatched up for a cabin keep." 

Your brain doesn't comprehend that, at first, a little distracted knuckling Bro's wallet from its chain. Your brow crimps down, thinking he meant to imply that you would, what, steal money from truckers, or that truckers were a routine source of free contraception or -

The heavy denim slips from your hand and you startle as it hits your foot, ears ringing with blood. "Was that a joke," you ask, less sure than you've ever been of Bro's mysterious ironics. You mix up the jeans on the floor and step into his instead of your own, but just cinch the belt to its closest eye and carry the fuck on getting your shoes.  
  
"It's solid advice. They got apps for hookups, now."  
  
Your neck heats. You want to tell Bro to go fuck himself, but you're scared to find out if this is a joke or not, if Bro actually thinks that's why you are going out for condoms, or is trying to get under your skin by playing ignorant. Either option is incredibly daunting, a hover of rejection. "Uhh," you manage to drawl, conveying about as much uncertainty and recrimination as possible in that one syllable.  
  
You clear your throat.  
  
You secure the wallet back in the pocket of Bro's jeans, chain and all. "No thanks on the casual hookups, truck-stop or otherwise."

Bro doesn't answer, merely changes the tv channel to high-energy informercials, slumped upright against the headboard like a pile of snow ploughed up against a curb, knees and feet lumps under the white sheet.

-

The cashier at the gas stop tries to ID you for the condoms and you've only got Bro's wallet on you and your mouth slants sideways because there was no possible way you looked _too young_ to qualify since you were taller than most and 16 was the legal buying limit for maybe obvious reasons but these people wanted to sell to your keeper directly and this, you realize, is your first actual brush with prejudice. The overhead fluorescents give off an audible buzz so you slap some headache pills down on the counter instead and crack a joke about giving your Alpha the old headache excuse since the condoms were a bust and you don't want to face swimsuit season with a bun in the oven and the cashier startles, glaring at you.

You don't lower your shades to glower back or anything, you just frown.

The cashier's eyes track up and down, nostrils flaring slightly as they test the air. "Oh," they say, flat, and ring the condoms up.

You are thoroughly confused, but you pay with what loose cash you can leaf from Bro's wallet. Did they smell Brodie on his jeans, think you were some underage Alpha getting strange off the curbside? You know you look average, despite your scars and your white hair; you don't look monied but you don't look broke enough to need to hang around truck stations for upward match mobility. You don't ask. You're tall and you're scuffed up and you give off conflicting signals on your orientation and that's fine, probably. You take the small paper baggie in a cradle from the bottom, toast the air with it and mumble your appreciation.

The cashier is still waspish with their confusion, which you can probably understand - it's late, you look like a fucking urban myth, and they can't get a read on your orientation through Brodie's Rood funk. You shuffle out of the quickstop like you're guilty of something, because you're human and empathetic and the cashier's scorn had gotten under your skin - you're not a bad person and you don't deserve that kind of scrutiny and your feelings are plumb damn hurt.

Then you remember to what end you just bought those condoms and laugh around the ignition of your cigarette, lightened by the irony.

-

The motel room is dark, TV off, and Brodie is slid down on his back in a diagonal sprawl by the time you sidle back in; you don't bother softening the shut of the door or the crinkle of the paper bag either way, if he is awake or not. "Do you honestly think," you say, made brave by the cold night air you'd just come in from, blinking hard to try and re-acclimate to the dark. "That I would up and jump some stranger if I was hot enough for it? Or were you just fucking with me?" You kick off your shoes with a little more force than necessary.

"'S'fuckin' with you," Bro mumbles. "'S'easier, right? Treating something like it is what it ain't?" He snuffles, fingers rasping through his hair, scratching his scalp. "I don't want you gone to DC."

You still, pulse pounding through your ears.

Brodie, "Easier to say I do; easier to say sure, D, you can fuck off on a series of meet-n-greets with a bunch of lousy Auction Bids don't know what you can do, don't know your worth." He clears his throat, flicks his hand toward the pile of blankets on the floor. "Wouldn't know what it was they married, much less who. Wouldn't know you at all."

Your hands pick sluggish at Brodie's belt buckle, and the jeans slip down your hips with the fly still buttoned, pool heavy and warm atop your feet. "Easier to say you don't want to fuck me stupid, get me gravid?"

"Ten dollar word," Bro congratulates, rote. "Means egg-heavy, though. 'S for birds, or lizards."

You nod. "Um," Your readers fall off as you tug your shirt over your head, are bundled up in your shirt and tossed to the empty cot. "So, I have this -" you pause to bend down in a kneel, scoop the bedcovers off the floor, bury your chin in the bleach-dry sheets. "I guess, preconception, or assumption, that you've never lied. To me."

Bro's laugh is like a crack of thunder, and it chuckles down to huffs of restarted disbelief. "Miho I lie to _everyone,"_ he manages past the merry strain in his voice. He snuffs, sobering a bit. "Guh. Shit. Why'd you ever think that? That I wouldn't, haven't lied to you?"

Your shoulder jerks up, and you topple the blankets back to the bed, delaying the struggle you're going to have to initiate to get some bedspace. "Not like you've ever promised it." You set the pharmacy bag on the bedside table nearest, a visual reminder that you Had Intentions and basically no idea how to go about executing your plans. You just want to _win,_ just once, you just want to have something over Bro, you want to crack at least one of his thousand codes - and you also just sort of want to fuck, which is less sophisticated but no less motivating. "I think I just trust you. Make room."

Bro grunts, doesn't budge. "Trust that if I ever lied to you, it were for the reason of some good, yours or mine?"

"Sure." You exhale, put a foot up to the side of Brodie's hip, try to shove him over. He's heavy, and you're fast but you're not strong, not any stronger than any other nerd your size and height with your workout schedule; you're more a swimmer's build and you've nothing to anchor against Brodie's sheer bulk. "I lie to you all the time, by the way. It's almost always for my own sake."

Bro huffs, half a chuckle. "Yeah, I know. Monkey see, monkey do."

"You don't _know,"_ you argue, not half as petulantly as you expect, and shove under the covers to stretch out on your back next to Brodie, wedging your shoulder under his to try and flip him like a pancake. "Hhf. You don't know half the shit I've never told you. Like I took John's cherry."

"Knew that." Bro sighs, turns himself over onto his stomach. "And don't use that metaphor, it's gross," he croaks from the muffle of the pillows. "Lack of experience or knowledge is not a quantifiable object to be traded or given or taken, it's just a lack of physical happenstance. First dirty book John ever read would have taken his metaphorical cherry, and everything else after that would have only been proof of theory. You can't tread on fresh snow and call your footprints proof of ownership - those footprints melt away in the sun, because they are only the temporary mark you've made by taking up physical space, that snow prone to its changes over time."

"You hate purity culture," you recite. Despite his best efforts Bro was actually cool sometimes, and actually cared very deeply about opposing toxic social mores (though you aren't sure if that's specifically to the irony of being the poster child for Texan machismo, but). "Sorry. Whatever. That's how John sees it, is all, and he likes to give me shit about it because he is 'not a homosexual' in either camp. And that's my point, right? You don't know half the shit I've never told you because you've made it a point to know everything. What I did or didn't tell you is irrelevant, because you haven't kept track of the difference, and _you_ treat _me_ like I've told you everything, like I really do trust you all implicitly 'n shit."

Bro turns his nose toward you, shoves the pillow between you out of the way. "You don't?"

"Not about as far as I can fukken throw you, hoss."

Bro gives this news a thoughtful hum, as if savoring the novelty. "Guess that's fair."

You stew in the leftover adrenaline of that reveal, segregated from Brodie's heat by a hand's breadth, and snatch the spare pillow to shove under your head, glaring up through the dark. "Do you trust me?" you challenge, expecting a similarly direct decline.

"Like breathing," Bro answers softly, instead.

You chirp air in past your clenched teeth. "You lying?"

Bro husks a short wheeze. "I trust that I know who you are and what it is you'll do in any given context. I trust you as much as I trust my database of knowledge, against my own subjective judgement. I can throw you pretty damb far, though, so I'll not allude to some astronomical level of mistrust that just doesn't fucking exist." He reaches the short distance to your hair, ruffles it rough despite how you'd avoided the affection all day, lets his forearm rest against your face just to annoy you.

You huff against the soft skin of Bro's wrist, lave your tongue out and freeze as the taste seeps down the back of your throat, citrus tobacco, sweet and heady and whiskey-smoked, aftertaste of malt, garlic gasoline behind your molars that makes your whole mouth water and your knees tense. You turn your head away from Bro, face gone hot and lungs gone bottomless. "You trust me to be well-trained," you rasp, throat tight. "You trust I'm not gonna go bonkers and wreck the planet. You tied that rope, didn't you?"

"I don't trust that figurative rope to hold, if there's a figurative fire," Bro corrects, mopping his hand over your face, squinching your cheeks between fingers and thumb to wag your chin. "Or a mouse or whatever it is grown-ass elephants are scairt of. I trust you'd fuck this whole planet and the next three in reach if I ever died, and I trust that's a real goddamn problem, because I don't remember teaching you how to avenge yer fukken feelings."

"What if I died," you volley easily past the loosened clasp of Bro's hand, the topic of Strider death a common visitor to your anxious self-reflections. "For real, I mean. What if they nuclear annihilated my every last cell, or beheaded me or whatever, what would you do?"

"Probably get a wife."

It feels like a blow, if it were the truth or if it were casual dismissal of a question you desperately want answered. "Fuck you, man, I'm serious."

"Fuck you, I'm serious too." Bro squinches you again, sighs, removes his hand. "I lived nearly as old as yourself, on my own. A life without you is entirely feasible, was always feasible, but I done grown used to the regular access to nookie and would want some sort of replacement should you ever bite the dust, or ever get around to getting the fuck outta my House."

Your chest is tight. It shouldn't be so tight, you shouldn't feel so rotten to hear this, this is normal, this is expected, you mean next to nothing to this asshole, this machine, this self-centered psycho. "Liar," you try to accuse, but it's just a whine from the back of your throat and you swallow hard to cut it off, regret immensely that you got in this bed, couldn't hide your lack of composure four feet away in the cot. "Liar," you try again, lower, steadier. You nudge your foot back until you hit the hairy swell of Bro's calf. "For whose good are you slinging these lies, yours or mine?"

"Both, D." Bro shifts, the mattress dipping, giving you room you neither want or need. 

But you remember the first time you died, 10, and how tall Brodie had stood, how he'd flickered so fast through the rest of those chitinous white hellportal creatures some of their carapace caught fire. He didn't even gather your body, didn't return to collect you, which you assumed was some cold-hearted efficiency move, to just let the labcoats retrieve you with the other samples, whatever - but when you got up, and got back to the research camp, Brodie had been stretched out along a tarp on the medic tent floor, comatose with all the medication they'd hooked into his veins, visibly unhurt except for the clean tear tracks through the soot on his face.

You knew you had died; Brodie had known you had died; none of the researchers knew this, only assumed it was a mistake Bro had made in the heat of the battle, some fear response triggered by a near miss, and you refused medical attention just as you'd been taught, wary that they were going to lay you out the way they'd laid out your Bro, wary they were going to get you on a table and slice you open and pull your organs out just to watch them regrow, or something.

That year, your tenth year, Brodie kicked the rooftop training up a notch. Two years later you would collaterally murder thousands of people, and a handful of months past that Bro would take the rooftop training down several notches, and eventually finger your 'Megan slizz til you dribbled cum against his thigh and shook and shook and shook.

It was difficult to conceptualize even now, Bro so distraught as to render himself unable to face your corpse, so lost in thought and action that he'd let the researchers anywhere near him with an IV drip full of drugs. He was now trying to obscure that data, those past examples of giving-a-shit. Except Bro went through all this trouble training you up and humbling you down to make sure you _did stay alive,_ to make sure you were promised an allowance to live outside of his custody. If he didn't care that much, he wouldn't have wasted his time teaching you, wouldn't have even wasted his time bringing you in with him on those missions; would have just let the labcoats have you, would have just let the whole wide dangerous world swallow you whole.

"What do you want me to say," Bro complains against your prolonged silence, nasal in his annoyance. "That I'd stop eating? Dive headfirst into the first few routine stages of severe goddamn grief, but never make it to recovery? Need me to _seppuku_ just because you got nuked for your first and last attempt at world domination, you goddamn diva? What?"

"Just tell me the truth," you demand quietly, swiveling in place until you're on your stomach, pillow shoved over at Bro's face to take the brunt of your halfhearted punch. "Jackass."

Bro pulls his face from the pillow to reply, "I wouldn't 86 this planet, is all I know."

"I would 86 this planet _if this planet was the thing that killed you,"_ you insist, turning fretfully Bro's way. "Because that's the only end I really see sneaking up on either of us, that we'd live long enough for the world to turn us into villains, that we'd have to make enough many difficult choices ain't get what decent PR they'd need and _poof,_ there goes our ticket to society, official social pariahship, hunted and suffering even as we defend the very people who spit on us."

"Well that," Bro says, flat, "is _quite_ the fiction. You been watching that TMC garbage again? You know there's way more unsung support for heroes that just doesn't sell news rags, right?"

"I don't want to be a hero," you say, curling in as your stomach goes tight and shivery. "Thankless goddamn occupation. I want to do my music, maybe start up some collaborations again, get that House started with John -" but you're lying, again. You're saying what's easy and reasonable, not what's true, and you can't hardly expect Brodie to tell the truth when you aren't setting the example. "I mean," you correct gently, and sliding your arm across the mattress feels like reaching across a very deep chasm, some crack in the continental ice that you could drop your heart into, a deadly impact after an eon of falling. "I want to stay home with you, yeah, you got me there. There's nothing I want or need from anybody else that you don't already give me, and I don't think that was your intention but it's the truth, now."

You fumble a bit when your knuckles meet the skin over Brodie's ribs, which is hot and a little damp. You start to stroke him down like an animal, but your hand sticks. "I got no illusions on Egbert. What we got going now is pretty good, but it's not essential to our friendship," you continue, and the realization of this truth hurts way less than you had anticipated. You have to take a deep breath for this next confession, voice low as if imparting a valuable secret. "I want to live in a fuckoff cliffside mansion on the west coast, bought and paid for by my career in the arts; and I want you to come home from your dayjob or college class or whatever to fuck me so stupid I forget the alphabet. Like. _Every_ day. Not just when I need it."

This actually spurs a response from Brodie's side of the bed, a heady wash of malt and tannin, that mysterious ochre you couldn't identify earlier now strong; it is musk, you realize distantly. Brodie's chemical signatures were always as neatly contained as his lies - he was plenty emotive but a part of you wonders now how much of that was theater meant to inure you, some facade of a personality, playing at a short temper and a stoic disregard for your general comfort. You'd seen him pissed and bitchy and you've even seen him drunk and philosophical and you thought, you _thought_ you'd seen him horny - you definitely knew what his knot felt like, definitely heard the hitch in his breath as he came, definitely tasted the salt of him in the air but it was never - it was never _this._

No, this was... this reached deep past your lungs straight to your head and groin, dizzy and full with it. "Mh," you protest quietly, certain you had more to say. "'N I want," you huff quietly, hand stilled against Bro's ribs, bracing yourself really. "To tell the truth. B'cos you're not -"

After a pause of you just breathing ever deeper, slower breaths, Bro turns his chin toward you to prompt, "Not what?"

Your fingers dig a little into the divots of Bro's rib and muscle. "Not gonna give me what I want 'nless you know what-all that actually is, and not just the lie I put up to obfuscate an ugly goddamn truth."

"Ten point word, obfuscate," Bro congratulates, and cups his hand around your neck, thumbs the pulse point below your ear in a hard rub. "I can't be the Head of your House, D."

A little drunkenly, you laugh. "D'you want to? To be it, though? With me?"

"Like breathing."

And here you think Bro could pull you in, turn your ass up and get a hike over you, let you marinate in anticipation before sliding the rigid stab of his cock in, fits and starts because he's big and you're always a little too tense, a little too tight. Your pores sigh open and you fidget the heavier blankets down with a few kicks, hooking your leg over the hot cradle of the back of Bro's knee.

Bro removes his hand to grab the pillow you've abandoned, shoves it over his head, the flat planes of his shoulderblades heaving in a yawn.

You are so goddamn offended that your limbs electrify, elbow stabbing down into the mattress to push yourself up. You want to shove Bro clear off the bed but your body wants to koala-cling to his side instead and you're still way too annoyed to compromise these urges so you crane across Bro's back to fit your mouth at the small of his neck just below his hairline and you bite - hard.

It's a dominance move that's usually applied Alpha to Beta or Alpha to Omega, or Beta to Omega but never, ever applied by Omega to _anyone,_ especially against an Alpha. Bro makes a noise like he's stepped on a Lego, a cuss of annoyance and pain which quickly turns into another noise like he's discovered that Lego was actually a used needle, disgusted and angry. "I will _turn you,"_ Bro growls, snatching the back of your neck so fast you didn't even register he'd shifted out from under you. "Into a _goddamn pair of boots,_ you _ever_ fucking -" he swipes the back of his neck, and you can see the twist of horrified confusion on his face through the pale blue glow of the bedside clock. "You ever fucking _do that again."_

"Mm, yeah?" you husk, throat dry, pulse thundering through your ears. "Cruella DeVil?" Your head is swimming, you realize you are well and truly in the middle of what might be categorized as a 'swoon'. "Or 's that Buffalo Bill? It puts the lotion on?"

Brodie only huffs, still incredulous, and shoves you out of bed so hard you actually end up on your feet, stood to brace against the impact you might have otherwise landed against the wall. This is fine, though, because it gives you the opportunity to peel your briefs down, to crack open that particular potpourri of 'Meg head. Your hand is already between your legs when your knee hits the side of the bed and you collapse to a kneel, shoulders shaking as you drape over the lump of Bro's legs as if to pin him in place. He doesn't kick your teeth down your throat, so that's something.

Bro doesn't move much at all, in fact, half propped up on an elbow, glaring you down, that familiar cement tang to him when his dander's up, and you wonder if his Rood was kickstarted in earnest by your stunt, or delayed?

"You wanna fuck me b'fore you skin me, first?" you ask, sincere, both hands between your legs to cover your modesty, dick heavy against the heel of your palm.

"You wanna drop the performative shit," Bro cracks, voice like granite snapping through a layer of ice - the words worm into your brain like a Command, and your breath gutters, joints gone watery. Bro rarely Commands you, says it's bad for the discipline you need to cultivate in your strifes, like it could rot away the foundation of your self-control, make you dependent on taking orders. 

"Sorry," you breathe, honest and hurting for it. Your hands uncurl, ease down your thighs, and you tilt sideways to land your hip against the bed, curled towards Bro with your arms crossed over your stomach, knees pressed tight together. "I don't know how else to act." Your gut swells, the first breath of a sob that you press your forearms down against, stifling. Your chest is on fire, your asshole is clenching and fluttering open to seep slick down the back of your thigh, and you are sucking lungfuls of Brodie's impending Rood so deep that you're going to hyperventilate.

"Wull, me neither," Bro argues, brows drawn together tight but mouth set in a line of concern. "I don't have the history of experience you seem to goddamn assume."

"Liar," you plead, writhing to bury your face into the sheets, and oh god oh shit you are going to Die, you will Expire from the beautiful fucking perfection of that reveal.

Bro's arm arcs out, bed jarring. "Where was I supposed to find the time to get laid, D? And with whom?" Brodie was literal virgin-with-capital-V before you, a weird truth you never even contemplated before, much less suspected. No, of course he was, _of goddamn course he was,_ the big fukken weirdo. He was always running that hustle, building fires in which to stick some irons, and he never came home smelling like anybody else.

"Like now," you whisper into the mouthful of bedding you've bitten, eyes winching shut. "On a weekend, for your seasonal." You rest your chin in the crook of your elbow, self-soothing with a pass of your own wrist behind your ear. "With a trucker maybe or someone off an app, I dunno, whatever you're into."

Brodie's legs slide away from your head, his feet hitting the floor, the mattress shifting as he stands. "I'll take the fucking cot, you _enormous goddamn infant."_

"Broh," you plead, pulling your mouth away from the gummy wad of sheet you were gnawing. "Gnuh, holy shit, I am going to _die,"_ you insist, all gleeful drama, kicking out to twist fretfully to face Brodie's journey to the pullout, every nerve raw, stripped to exposure by his absence. "I won't - okay, you said it, I won't be, what, performative about this. I don't mean you're lying, about never - hhnh." It's too good, it's way _too good,_ the idea that Brodie really wouldn't just up and fuck some rando - that it was you, that it was only you, and that had to _mean something._

"I mean," you strain, fist curling in the downy comforter. "I mean you saying you don't know how else - like I said how I uh, how I don't know, you said you don't know either, how else to act. 'S a lie."

Brodie doesn't answer, and the cot squeaks under his weight. 

You hum a wavering Omega call, venting some of the tension in your chest, sweat beading at your seams as you rock a little in place to inch over toward the spot Bro had vacated, and you burrow into the warm sheets, clasping his abandoned pillow under your chin, wrists pressed hard behind your ears, fingers locking together to wring at the back of your neck. Self-soothing. 

Roughly twenty minutes pass of silence in the dark, and you can't sleep for how warm the air is, all your senses straining for any sign of life across the room, any creak of cot frame or shuffle or snore.

The bed dips behind you, noiseless, and Bro's large fingers replace your own through your hair, that long-sought ruffle that you decide to allow because you're sick of rejection and suppose you might have been the one rejecting Bro this whole time and well, yeah. You wanted to segregate yourself from what you and Brodie _used to be_ so you could be _something else_ a little more comfortably - but the two roles were part and parcel and it was never going to be comfortable, or easy, between you. 

"Mh," you grunt softly, turn your face into the pillow to let Bro get a thorough scalp rub in. "You smell like -" you stall the snark about new cars or shoe departments or the ass-end of a rodeo arena, "Good," you finish awkwardly and don't bother to correct the syntax.

 _"Hueles_ a manzanas, y aspiraciones sin _esperanza,"_ Bro says, bed shifting as he sits. He exhales. His grip drifts lower, wraps firm around the back of your neck.

Your nerves spark, shoulders loose and legs tight, knees digging down into the mattress. Your mouth pulls back against the moan, an open-jawed croon into the muffle of the pillow as Bro's thumb works circles against the base of your skull. The bed creaks, the sheets over your back warm, forewarning the press of Bro's weight settling over you, over the covers.

Bro sighs behind your ear, mouth replacing his hand to firm a bite over your nape.

All your systems flutter, like fluorescent lights blinking to life, heart and lungs the first to catch up, thoughts and limbs to follow. "Mh," you protest, eyelids heavy. You shove the pillow out from under your chin, writhing a bit as Brodie's bite loosens, regrips you. You might have even leaned into it, because the fucking was a reprieve from the sneak-attacks and the rooftop showdowns, and it was even something you thought you might be able to eventually _win_ at, for a given value of victory. You just had to train up a bit, is all. Learn what actually got under Bro's skin, not just what he'd do by the word of some behavioral science textbook to keep _your_ ass settled. "Do you even like it? With me?"

Brodie shifts to the side, hip taking his weight, nose bumping the back of your head. "Yeah, blud," he mumbles. "Life just sort of happened at no nevermind to building me up a frame of preference."

Which went without saying - if a Strider really didn't want to do something, then they wouldn't do that thing; but Striders did plenty of uncomfortable, necessary things at the behest of uncomfortable, necessary outcomes. Broderick Strider could have owned the world, but he didn't want to put in that much work, or live a life of that much struggle, so the world was left to its own keeping. You don't want to run the world, you just want to run your own House, and running the world was only circumstantial to that end, because the world currently stood in direct opposition of you being able to run anything at all.

Or maybe you could both run away to space, live with the Asgardians that you weren't, Gods among the Godly, aliens in true, but that sort of upward mobility was astronomically out of reach.

You mumble into Bro's wrist, his elbow denting the bed at your shoulder. "Who would you want, if I wasn't here in the first place?"

"I know what I _don't_ want," Bro assures against your neck. 

Delayed hysterics thicken in your throat, crack through in your voice. "That s'pposed to make you discerning? An exclusive catch?" 

Brodie's shrug nudges the back of your shoulder. "I s'pose it just makes me conservative. Didn't have much in the way of direction before the State took us in, and by then my only direction was keeping you alive."

"So you wanted me," you say, turning your face against the bed to try and catch sight of Brodie in your peripheral.

"Naw, D," Bro smooths a sweaty clump of hair from your temple. "I _didn't_ want to be alone on this planet, that was all. Knew what I didn't want, knew what I had to do to avoid it. The concept of 'you' is immaterial. You could have been anything, a housepet or a chronusbug, so long as you'd fallen from the sky-ro-graph same as me."

"Your good luck," you recite quietly, and try to ignore the chilly grip of apprehension in your chest. Bro's explanation makes sense, chips away at your triumphant assumptions, talks you down from the high of feeling significant.

Bro's snort stirs your hair, and he settles a little heavier at your side, and when you meet his stare through the gloom you find it drowsy, warm and a bit fond. Your apprehension eases, and you kick lazily through the bedcovers to try and get further under Bro's weight.

"My good luck," Brodie says against the damp press of your forehead.

There were worse things than embarrassment. "Y'ain't 'immaterial', Broderick," the last half of Brodie's name is muffled by a soft collision of shoulder, pillow and your face as Brodie shifts back to peel the blankets down, clear some space to climb in against your pocket of heat. "To me, to what I want. I wouldn't fuck a chronusbug, for starts."

A cinch of distaste flickers across Bro's expression and his shoulders and chest heave in a slow, deep breath. "You would if it was an Alpha," he says, and you don't know if he's teasing or lying or - "You would if it was the thing that raised you up, the thing beside which you fought against terrible threats; if it was mean as sin to you most days but for the days you were gonna fuck. I reckon you'd take like a duck to water on the xeno-relations frontier, if it was all that."

This. This is the hardest conversation you've never had. "So you an' me, we're circumstantial," you guess, throat dry. Bro was anything if not deliberate, and the fucking was never about him _enjoying_ himself, no, even if it could exist alongside the physical comforts of generalized Household affection.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you, yes. The sum of 'us' is only the sum of our actions, our goals - well, my goals. Ain't out of our control. Out of yours, probably. Unless you wanna change your goals. Rearrange your priorities a little. Join the real world, for starts."

You grunt, roll a little closer, skin meeting skin despite the heat, the stifle. "What are your goals, lately?" There were worse things than rejection.

"Same as before," Bro drawls, shoving an arm under the pillow under your head. "Just a list of things to avoid. Shit I know I don't want."

You tuck your chin, butt your head down against the hollow of Bro's chest, flinch when your knee brushes the hard muscle of his inner thigh. "Like being alone on this planet?"

"Whole crowd of skybabies on file, nowadays," Bro dismisses with a sniff. "So I'm really only on the watch fer mortal imperilment, political fuckery, a beergut. Shit to avoid."

"You gonna avoid me?" You hate it, a little, how stupid and self-centered you sound.

"You ain't on that list, little man, no." Brodie's hair-ruffle returns, slides down into another scruffing at the back of your neck. "So you don't hafta act so fukken squirrely, alright?"

"Am not either," you argue against Bro's clavicle, eyelids heavy and heartbeat gone sluggish, blood thick. "I got goals, remember," you slur, mollified in the soak of Bro's stabilized, three-note Alphahood. "Just pursuant to those goals, is all."

Bro hums, and your spine tingles, consciousness tipping down, down.

You wake to the sound of the shower, bathroom unlit, room still dark. Bro's Rood had left a sweat silhouette in the bed, and you crawl into the cooling spot to bundle the blankets atop, trap in the gear oil musk and chalky tobacco and savory scent of fuck, every cell purring. The spot your hip digs into is a little more wet than the rest, and you curl under the sheets to hotbox that hormonal payload, because you're sixteen and have the impulse control to prove it.

The shower stutters to a stop.

"Dee," Bro complains, peeling the covers down. "A bigger goddamn bed-hog I never met." Everything about Bro seems worn, somehow. His voice is softened by a drowse, eyes unsharp, posture loose. He's unslouched, you notice late, but it's not to his benefit - it just makes him look lanky, instead of the usual compact hunch. Confusion flits across his face, some stray puzzle dragging through the moment uninvolved.

You scoot back to make room, rapt. Brodie is a good-looking dude when he wants to be, the Rood giving that flush to his skin, that slackened ease to his movement, robbed of the usual inorganic rigidity.

"Aren't you going to dissolve?" You ask as Bro sidles in next to you.

"Yeah," he sighs, staring straight up at the ceiling, distracted by thoughts innumerable. "'M gonna break down into nothing, because nothing is everything."

"Zen," you snark, gripping his upper arm to anchor you both. "I am the walrus, coo coo kachoo."

"Dee," Brodie wheedles, voice cracking with a growl. "Give me a break. I mean it." Instead of shoving you from the bed, though, he pulls you in by the arm, digs his chin into your neck, huffs against your ear. "Just be chill for five minutes."

"I am never _not_ chill," you insist, but you happily drape an arm over Brodie's ribs and scratch under his shoulder and let the breath get squeezed out of your lungs. "Thought you'd be more aggro, honestly."

" 'S a reversed stereotype, is what it is," Brodie lectures. "All them office desk types, they got energy to throw, start fights, front around. Real leaders, though, they got all the calm. They got all the lax, because their energy is otherwise spent doin' for others all the time. Rood settles an Alpha down, if that Alpha been doin' his job right."

"Makes sense," you yawn. "Y'all'd never get laid, unless you get that seasonal prerogative to stay in for a cuddle. Doesn't make it less hilarious, just 'cos it's biologically sound." Victory nudges into the corners of your mind, and you flicker in place, paper bag from the bedstand now in hand.

"Yer a monster," Bro says. "Kickin' a man when he's down."

"I learned from the best," you deadpan, cos it's not like he never made light of your Heats, teased you, indulged you in things you never asked for aloud. You crane your chin over Bro's shoulder to rifle the condom box apart from the headache pills. "'Bout how often do you tie one off Rood-wise, like what's par?"

"Par's in the neighborhood of never, you fuckin' wretch. It's the like havin' the flu, nothing like yer Heats."

You let this revelation knock around in your brain with all the others, a merry carnival of what-the-fuck. You carefully reword, "About how often do you want to tie one off, if at all?"

"Oh, I get a choice, huh." You might be imagining the warmth in Bro's tone. "An' here I thought my honor was forfeit, just for getting back in this bed."

When you retell this story, it's not going to take as long, there was never this much communication, you would both be victims of nature. It would be a brutal, melancholy coupling, a storm of hormones and desperation and inveterate angst. You'd be a pair of terrified aliens with nobody else in the world, ignoble to one another in your isolation.

The truth of this is that it's a long time coming, premeditated, hashed over, dissected. It's a careful, plotting approach, because you aren't reckless, either one of you, despite the requisite of your shared career. You're not even entirely sure of it all, far from any compulsive confidence despite your earlier mimicry of such (and Brodie was right to correct you earlier, because artifice had no place in this).

You want to believe that Brodie hadn't invited you here to any specific end; that he was telling the truth that he'd only wanted to talk, that he was just trying to chill with someone familiar, that the Rood was just coincidence. You want to believe all that, because it would mean you actually had some agency, that you weren't just passively accepting an invitation, an allowance that Brodie's made for you, a reward for behavior, good or bad, yours or his.

You want to believe that you aren't that goddamn predictable, that when Bro ignored your flirting it was to his naivety and not, well; there were worse things than being rejected.

You want to believe the kiss is your idea, at least - and it does seem to catch Brodie off guard. You kiss the way the magazine articles say a Megan should, breathy nibbles you once traded with John under the shelter of a pillow fort. Bro licks into your mouth with one long swipe the way the magazine articles promised an Alpha would, tasting your health.

John tasted like yellow cake and popcorn butter and the minty dental wax he wore over his braces, like cool clear Omega trust, and he smelled like rain and kissing him felt like flying.

Brodie tastes like beer and cigarettes and the blood of a bitten cheek, like dark smoky Alpha draw, and he smells like lightning and kissing him feels like flying _apart._ He pushes his tongue past your teeth and your eyes roll up and if you were standing your knees would have buckled, hot from your throat to the floor of your lungs. You fumble the condoms to grab two fistfuls of Brodie's shower-damp hair, slotting your mouth against his with a muffled clash of teeth.

"Butch," Brodie reprimands against your parting nuzzle, and his shoulder pulls away, arm returning with the crackle of a condom wrapper in hand.

You want to ask out loud if Brodie wants you or not; you want him to say nice things, call you good-looking in whatever parlance was most honest, let it be known how much he wanted this, if he wanted this, if he brought you here because he wanted to share this with you, if -

"On yer belly," Brodie instructs, bumping his nose against yours to nudge you around.

"Yeah? Or what?" You tighten your grip in Bro's hair, pull yourself in, taste his health in one long swipe, like the magazines warn you should never do.

Brodie doesn't have an answer, just a damp huff of breath, a grin you can feel tug the kiss askew and you feel like you've done something right, made some impossible deduction, picked the exact correct moment to push back for once. He likes to knock you down to your bare components, usually, until you're so passive and sub you can't even talk; or if Bro doesn't like it then at least that what he's most practiced at, no other script to read from. This isn't that, though - for one it's not your Heat being answered or your bad attitude corrected, because this isn't about you at all (around whom the whole fukken' world doesn't have to revolve, god,) and for seconds if you went passive now then nobody would get laid.

You kiss each other in ebbs and pauses and a readjusted embrace to spare Bro's arm, in sighs and starved shuddering gasps to break the silence, necking until your jaw aches and your mouth is numb; and all the while Brodie's Rood is changing depth and heat and tone, relayered over his shower-fresh veneer. A contentment ropes through the air to steady your arousal, lets it build without overwhelming or crashing back down into the usual anxious disappointment.

"On yer belly," Brodie repeats against your ear, a soft request that lances through your bones like a Command so you go, a narrow roll against Brodie's chest until your hips are settled flat against the bed and your dick is tucked throbbing up against your abdomen.

When you retell this story, you'll be desperate and Broderick will panic and everything will hurt.

The latex over Brodie's cock feels gummy and thin against the back of your slicked thigh and nothing hurts. Bro's hips shift to jutt against your backside and you don't even get the usual ache when his cock splits you open - the prolonged denial of the evening as close to foreplay as you two ever got. You spread your knees and lift your ass and brace your hands against the headboard for leverage, your voice fucked out of your abdomen in hitches and thrusts, and this part is familiar - you expected it to be different, somehow, but it's not. It's rote.

It's rote, except Bro's teeth sink a little bit deeper into your shoulder than usual, and he holds there and does not let go, not for comfort or ease of movement, not for the way your voice goes high and tight and his breath stutters and it still doesn't hurt, not really, not like usual, and not like rejection would have. The bite lances a flash of hot and cold up your neck and down your back and you hear more than feel the wet crunch of teeth breaking skin, sinking into muscle. 

Diaphragm tight, head spinning, you hear blood patter against the mattress as Bro rocks you into the headboard, and you don't feel a thing.


	6. I : VI

Your name is ARNIM ZOLA, and you are one of many.

Or at least you assume your numbers are still LEGION in their electronic strongholds and various host take-overs, because you have been isolated in a closed system ever since THE AVENGERS first launched their cascade counter-measure against your modern-day progress.  Your numbers might have dwindled since, as SHIELD now had eyes through most public internet service providers, vigil programs, active code launching, pattern detectors et al; and your ghosts had taken wing to the more obscure circles of electronic communication, a contained virus lurking in old e-mail clients or haunting the inscrutable passages of the dark web.

You have been talking to HOUSTON since long before the strike against your strongholds, flattering him, playing on his post-SCP paranoia, faking at common goals and shared interests; though in Houston you sometimes like to imagine a kindred spirit, a survivalist, a scientist reaching for immortal perfection, a ravenous intellect unburdened by the daily sentiments of the mundanes who actively misunderstand him. The lad only lacked for ambition, committing cautiously, keeping his secrets close to the chest.

You are surprised, for instance, when you wake up in Houston's body to find an Omega in your new bed. You didn't know Houston was married, but of course he would be, of the right age for it, successful, intelligent, a decorated Agent of the state of Texas. The Oughtie asleep by your side is long and lean and pale, the starter flowery notes of the night's past lovemaking weighing through the air, the Ought's bare back flush down past the curve of his ass.

You wait at a ten-count for the last of the nano receptors to activate and sync, burying good and tight in Houston's brain matter, anchoring down in his spine, a physical possession even the strongest of wills could not break.  Houston was still in there with you, of course, unless you could get your hands on one of the chairs left behind at a HYDRA base, electrically lobotomize the poor wretch, distill his memories and soup his will, drink of him until there is nothing left but the third thing you'd both become of it.

[[''Thought you said you can't broadcast through wi-fi,''  Houston complains dispassionately from the scaffold of the small mental room you've built to contain him, his projection that of a skinny child sat at a high metal table.  ''I double-checked.  Unless the program was in the nano tech from the start, but if it were it would have to have been chopped code, activating like a viral load once all the pieces were -'']]

[[''Yes,'' you answer primly, warmed that your host is more curious than alarmed, or angry; a true scientist and worthy corroboration against whom you had sold the idea of nano-particle technology capable of commanding directly to any metal body programmed to receive. Useful, for a commanding head of a crowd of underground robotic guardians.  ''Now,'' you sit opposite Houston's chair, a high, cold metal table between you with a high, dry stack of folders beside.  Houston himself is slight, young, a diminished projection with all the grease and poor posture of a thirteen year old, and you tutt at the attempt at deception. ''Let's see what we have to work with.'']]

The Oughtie stirs beside your new body, in your new bed.  Your new Oughtie, though there is a token suspicion from the man-child at the metal table in the mental room - nobody wants a stranger inside of them, fucking their spouse, but you have been trapped in wires and screens and lifeless humming boxes ever since your death, and could do with a little human connection. 'You', that is, as a splinter - for the 'you' who is still back in those high cold towers sending out more splinters will never know a host, and ever will 'you' feel reborn for the first time in any host your 'you's might come to occupy.

[[You leaf through Houston's memories with an ease that actually seeps a sense of being impressed through Houston's thought mapping - Houston and you share a kindred spirit, after all, dispassionate scientists both.  You shuffle briefly through the manila folder of memories most relevant to how Houston makes love to his Ought, confident you've got all the time in the world to read up on the backlog that would form Houston's personality, his habits and schedules and patterns of speech. You have all that time to learn how to mimic your Host, to uncover his usefulness and make good on his talents, to fit snugly into his life and lay the groundwork for accomplishing your goals.]]

The bed creaks under your shifting bulk and you are delighted to find that Houston is not the underweight intellectual visualized at the metal table in the mental room, but a massive heroic body with bridge cable strength who can easily drag his Oughtie across the slightly damp mattress by the hips.

You card quickly through Houston's 'household' folder for any hint of further family - if there are children, you don't want to wake them. You discover Houston's name, Broderick Strider, and the name of his Ought, Dave Strider, and no children for reasons you don't investigate just then, because the scent of breedable quim is electrifying your newly resurrected senses.

As resurrections go, this is probably one of the better, though you can't know the fate of your splinters to compare to, as isolated as you'd all been one from the other. Dave sighs and lifts his ass and Houston bangs his fists against the soundless walls you've blocked him off in, insists you use one of the rubbers in the bedstand, because Dave's -

You muffle the last of Houston's protests. All would be sorted in due time.

But you are no rapist, so you curl your tongue until you think you've got a grasp on Houston's regional American parlance and croon against Dave's sweat-sweet neck, "You wanna get knocked up?"

Dave huffs, rubs his chin down against the mattress. "Sure," he croaks, a pretty ruby eye flashing at you from under a fall of white hair, an albino prize they'd no doubt given Houston for his achievements. Whatever Houston's protests, he is old enough to start a family, and it would help cut an image with the public if Houston was a family man, a radical genius who could actually relate to the average waged American, or Russian, or whatever oppressed workingclass crowd was ready to be mobilized by the soonest smooth talker (India, or China maybe).

You reach down the firm planes of Houston's nude body to inspect the aroused heft of your new cock, and settle over Dave in a lazy drape, as the memories example.

Dave moans, stretches under your weight and splits his legs apart, pitiably marred head to toe with battle scars, a weapon and companion, a useful addition to your ever-building arsenal. "You serious?" he pipes, every line of him a strain of surprise, tension, apprehension maybe -

"If you want," you assure, kissing behind Dave's ear. Houston's lovemaking is simple, efficient, pared down by his stony intelligence. You'd have to pepper in your own habits over time, or take a mistress to be yourself around, or simply quote a midlife crisis for your sudden interest in foreplay.

"Then we're building a House," Dave clarifies in the dark of the bedroom, louder.

"If you want." A House, while something Houston would have denied himself to safeguard his alter-ego, would reinforce your public role, solidify your social standing, give you a broader network of influence. You very much want a House, and you very much want to claim your Oughtie right over the old scar of Houston's Bonding bite, get Dave heavy, start your legacy.

You finger Dave the way Houston sometimes fingered Dave, briefly alarmed that you've only got four fingers to each hand, and no scar to explain the mutilation.

[[''Mutation,'' Houston corrects, with all the casual note-taking of a theater critic.]]

Dave rolls his hips to match the dig of your fingering thrusts, panting with ever higher submission, excited now.  "Fuck what anybody else says," he insists in a shaking plea, hiking a knee up to open himself further.

Oligodactyly, you remember, is a genetic defect, which was just as terminable as dwarfism or mental retardation, under the Reich. Houston might have shied from progeny at the risk to his genetic legacy, children born with missing fingers, but the dark web reassured you of the merits of gene therapy, and you could put any deformed offspring under the knife, yourself. "Yeah," you agree, stroking down Dave's ribs to steady him, pin him, jab your new magnificent cock against the slick cleft of his ass, a ready knot sitting heavy and undescended behind your sac. "Fuck 'em."

Houston's protests are a constant, silent testing of the nanotech limits, no worse than a mosquito whine tinnitus quieter by the moment, tuned out and squashed down by the unmovable physical reality of the possession. You ransack Houston's memories for relevant content, picking at the frayed edges of him like a student worrying the soft dog-eared pages of a biography, skimming for highlights and notes in the margins.

That was the art of it, of what you did a thousand times over around the globe; for people existed in the details of their smallest habits, their least conscious tics, their demons and addictions and secrets. You tie a knot deep in the heat of the lithe body pushing up against you, and suffer a trailing climax with a feverish redouble to get your partner bred, answer his biology's cry for reclamation.

Houston watches as if over your shoulder, breath held, savoring Dave's fucked-out placidity, the flush to Dave's skin and deep hunger in his breathing, held against you by the knot stretching him wide. You let Houston know that it can be good, between you. It can always be like this, you can share your victories with Houston, let him enjoy these moments of happiness, if he accepts you, doesn't make a nuisance of himself.

You sink back down atop Dave to come again, knot tugging at Dave's hole with your short, eager thrusts. It feels good to be this young, this strong, and you break Houston's character to hold Dave by the ribs, shove your arms under his chest and nuzzle into his hair.

[[You urge Houston to confess why he ever thought himself above this sort of connection, why he ever denied himself such satisfaction, for you are replete and generous in the moment.

[['If I say,' Houston warns, sitting forward in his chair with a manifest cup of coffee.  'You might kill him.'

[['Dave was unfaithful,' you assume.

[['If I say,' Houston warns again, softer.  'You might just kill Us.'

[[This gives you pause, because there are few safeguards against your Hosts learning as much about you as you could learn about them.  The nanotech isn't a two-lane road, your host body is yours in total, but the psychological and emotional drift of your own memories and persona could not help but land in the open, and Houston has determined you a bit of a Pack Traditionalist, which isn't wholly inaccurate.]]

You wait atop Dave until your knot has softened enough to untangle your arms gingerly from his sleepy cling, before pursuing any answers.  

[[There is a stack of folders beside the table, sure, but those certainly aren't ALL of what makes up Broderick Strider, merely the most immediately useful.  Further in the recesses of Houston's mind, other folders are being locked up, chained down, buried.  You'll unearth these for your own edification eventually, usually during the chaos of the sleeping brain's REM cycle, as shored up in your high nanotech tower, as mechanically vigilant as you are blessed to remain.]]

In the meanwhile, you can just as well inspect your surroundings for clues, gather site intel and strategize for the convincing act demanded of you by tomorrow's deadline. 

The apartment is humble but technologically advanced, cluttered with cyborgenetic projects and narrated by humming server towers. What family Houston couldn't yet afford to start would be assured a bigger house, something suburban or a coastal city perhaps, with the help of a few sold patents. 

Waiting on the kitchen table is a short collection of Auction documents. So, a new marriage then, bought and paid for, but Dave to you feels years familiar, so you wipe your crotch and thighs down with a tea towel before taking a seat at the kitchen table, and prod the documents around for clues to Houston's sudden attempt at secrecy.

Dave's genetic reports are tucked in a newer envelope, and you assure Houston that albinism is a forgivable genetic defect because it is a recessive one, though Dave's parents should probably be hanged for inbreeding. You search the gene report for lineage, and don't understand what it is that you're reading, at first.

[[You shove into the teetering pile of folders, dig out the first to fit into your stubby hand, which is a folder slipped from a vault locked tight and buried far under the placid salt sea of Houston's best attempt at defense.  It smells like the ocean when you open it, and the information there is tart like blood in the back of your throat.]]

You almost do what Houston feared, you almost launch his naked body off the thirty-story roof, almost grab up a kitchen knife to stab his eyes out, something, _anything._

And the Americans call _you_ evil, those magnificently uninformed, idiotic _peons._

But Houston is too valuable a host to forfeit or damage, and the infiltration of him had taken so much time and investment, had absorbed your efforts to be near enough an obsession; and you can't just throw your victory away because your host is a deviant, an alien and a mutant and a perverted criminal. You have collaborated with worse, if you are being honest, but the statutory rape makes your stomach churn without the added sin of the incest, and you are torn between rage and disgust like a brittle bone torn between two starving dogs.

You shower under a spray so hot that your new skin dries rough, and dress yourself to spend the rest of the night on the livingroom futon, mentally flagellating Houston who only laughs, and laughs, because of all the ways the universe could have ever burdened him with guilt, it chose the ghost of a genocidal Nazi; 'deus ex ironica'.

You placidly argue that you were never a Nazi, merely a colluder to suit your own goals, and political affiliation changes as easily as political figures rise or die, and you perhaps were above all that in a fairly obvious way.

Houston makes it clear that he 'doesn't give a fuck' how you 'rationalize' it, neither of you have room to wag any moralizing fingers over objectification of other peoples' bodies; and he'll take origami lessons from a tuna fish before he'll take a lecture from you, about the abomination against nature he'd made of himself and his son.

TWO DAYS LATER, you would infiltrate the home office of Tony Stark to propose an Auction Bid, planting the seeds of your goals through Houston's persona like an expert puppeteer, seating Dave within THE AVENGERS to the specific target of CAPTAIN AMERICA, an old enemy.  A week after that, you would report in to SHIELD, with the easy excuse of a longstanding feral indictment to keep you off the field but find you employed deep, deep within SHIELD labs.


	7. I : VII

Your name is ~~DAVID ELIZABETH~~ DAVE STRIDER, inveterate liar, faux widow, newest Avenger.

Tony Stark's quarters belong to the third above-ground and therefore top floor of the Avenger's compound, and they are wide-windowed (problematic) and expensively furnished (the opposite of problematic). Everything is glass-top and shiny, deep white carpet or coal gray marble, glinting technology on nearly every surface, a large space made useful to its last square foot. The air doesn't smell like Stark, exactly, from disuse or high-quality ventilation or both, and very faintly smells like someone else entirely, perhaps the pretty redheaded CEO/wife/Beta triple threat with the clear strong voice you've seen in a few spare press meets.

"Was going to run you through introductions," Stark hazards from the double-doors in to the elevator lobby, setting the security to recognize you. "Thought you might want to clean up, first."

"Obliged," you drawl, and let your duffel slump to the foyer tile, toe out of your canvas chucks as Sawtooth and Squarewave make themselves at home, sentry in opposite corners of the swank sitting room. The limo ride here had been tense, interrogation disguised as casual interest, more implication that you'd need to talk to a SHIELD psychologist employed in the floors below ground before mission enrollment but HEY give us more backstory on those robots.

"Don't thank me, it's the team I want to spare," Stark cracks, pretending interest in the nearest vase of miniature bamboo, the notes in the air of him still bright with excitement.

"Calamari," you remember, raising an eyebrow over your shoulder. "From a gas station. In Utah?"

Stark flicks a hand through the air, pointing the way to what you assume is a bathroom. "Second door on the right. The further inland you go, the more suspect the seafood. And gas station coolers are opened too often, temperatures fluctuate, even the prepackaged, uh, stuff goes -" he cuts himself off mid-ramble.

You realize you're staring, because that's what _you_ do, you go off on nonsense tangents, you over-explain, you ramble. "Never trust the tuna melts, sure, I dig." You nod, and step carefully through the open livingroom to the requisite hall. 

The bathroom is so large your every rustle of cloth and skin echoes, and the clear glass stall for the roomy shower is unsettling the way an open field is unsettling to a rabbit - you're used to opaque glass frosted by hard water mineral deposit, with hardly enough room to turn around in. You're used to having to slouch forward to wash your hair. The mirrored cabinet standing between sink and toilet upholds a storefront display of fluffy white towels, an alignment of glass (?!) bottles that turn out to be shampoos, soaps, all brand matching, unopened. This is clearly a guest bath, and you can already imagine the sort of house parties it could accommodate. 

Sawtooth, typically, appears at the door to stand watch - he'd been one of your nannybots back when Brodie had to leave on mission and needed the apartment guarded from intrusion. You flattered yourself for many years under the assumption that Square and Saw had been built for you - something low-level and slow to train basic forms against, a pair of cameras to assure your safety while Brodie was out. But in reality, the bots had been around long before your time, to keep Bro company in the absence of anything like a normal social life. Squarewave had a speaking module, but this iteration seemed disabled of its jarring crack of snark. Sawtooth had a speaking module, too, you suspect - but you'd only ever heard him reply to Bro's mutterings out of sight, behind closed doors, and often suspected the act credited to ventriloquism.

"Nothing to say?" you ask Saw's broad-shouldered back, tugging your shirt over your head. "Knock twice if Bro's even watching the monitor anymore."

Sawtooth remains silent, a dumb sentry program running on what it's used to.

You strip and shower with your teeth on edge because it's not what you're used to - the hot shower is a sheer fucking luxury of steady water pressure and all-encompassing spray radius, and you can't enjoy it because your very presence here is only your presence away from Home, and Brodie isn't perched on the vanity stool clipping his toenails, mocking your hair products. The sonder for his company is coming at you from both horizons - first and most personally, because you need the backup to recover your cool; second and more professionally, because Brodie would know more what to make of this complex than you, he'd know the security gadgetry and he'd know what-all to say about systems and warrens and communications and elevators, not just gawp like a bumpkin whose only exposure to high-end tech was the audio-visual rigs at stadium venues.

You towel off like it's a revenge, and when you run a razor over your stubble you leave your sideburns a little lower and feel like it's a rebellion, somehow. You weren't ever going to be a pretty 'Meg, only just a comparably prettier version of your species, so you might as well rock the butch aesthetic. That was something John liked about you, anyway, that you were 'cool' and assertive, that you lived the Megan lifestyle right alongside your professional celebrity alias and looking, well, Beta if nothing else, that you could 'pass'.

You comb your damp hair to the side to reveal a cross-scar running from temple to hairline, and trade your aviators in for the tinted readers. You pluck through your duffel for a pair of black carpentry capris, which will not only showcase the horrendous scarring below your knees, left calf misshapen, but leave the glands in your ankles open to the air, let your scent fall wherever you travel, the cheapest type of seduction. This is paired with cork [tsinelas](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tsinelas) and a bright red muscle shirt. You look like you're due for the beach, and trust the building to keep warmer than the outside bits of New York - but pull an older, rattier SUBLIME hoodie from your duffel just in case - which you almost wear outright just to showcase your ironic grasp of slummy middle-class music appropriation, but nah. 

Might need to introduce yourself slowly, let these certified badasses get a taste, get acquainted before going full Sky-Citizen on them. Like John, they might not always Get It, and Brodie was depending on you to make good (but not TOO good, because fuck him).

Stark isn't anywhere to be seen back in the livingroom but you can hear a conversation coming from somewhere deeper in the apartments and you settle yourself on down into a black leather sectional couch big enough to seat all the people you know, which makes you long for the company of all the people you know. You dig your laptop out of your duffel, but hook an elbow over the back of the couch to watch what can only be described as a robot maid wheeling out of a closet toward the bathroom. You leg over the back of the couch to follow, relieved to find there is a laundry room on deck into which the robot has taken your damp towel.

"At ease," you bid the robot, a sleek rounded thing shorter than Stark with rubber-tipped graspers. You FLASH away and back to grab your duffel, mumble a thanks as the robot makes room for your administrations in front of the large face-loading washer.

"Yours is requested to floor 3," the laundrybot chimes in a pleasant feminine voice, and it takes the strap of your duffel deftly from the crook of your elbow.

"Heard," you confirm, well used to cognizant AI. This was the voice, you realize, that was in discussion with Stark deeper in the flat. "Availability of Mister Stark?" you prompt, unsure if this one could understand idioms or rhetoric and unwilling to test its figurative Turings too soon. 

There is a delay, and you're a little scared you've broken it already, but then Stark's voice replaces the expectant reply (and you jump), "Whatchu need, Agent Orange?"

"Agent Orange would be my brother, 'scuse you."

"Big Red?" Tony hazards again, the robot stalled mid-lift of a sheet from the dryer. "No, no, that's Brodie to a T. Big and redheaded." Tony sighs audibly, blubs, tries another - "Kid Vicious."

"Infantilizing," you argue flat, loading laundry, plucking detergent powder from a wire shelf overhang. "And I don't want to be compared to the guy who got owned by Freddie Mercury." You stand to push Sawtooth away a little, make some elbow room for yourself.

"Simon Ferocious," Tony recalls, chuckling. "You're a little young to know about that, aren't you?"

"Nobody is too young to stan Queen, Mister Stark."

The Starkbot scoffs. "Mister Stark was my dad. You can call me Tony just like everyone else."

"Kay." You slap the rest of the laundry together, knob a few buttons, engage the machine to its starter watery hiss. "You can just call me Dave. That's sort of a nickname already."

Tony's voice drops a careful level. "Would you like me to call you 'D'? Or is that a sacred Strider, off-limits kind of deal?"

"D's fine," you allow, but you're not sure if it is, not sure if there's anything between you and Brodie you're going to want back later, for yourself. "Efficient," you add, and wince. "I don't really want this to become one of those rising-degrees-of-severity things, like if you're calling me Dave in a disagreement, then David if you're really pissed, then the whole shebang, David Elizabeth, all exasperation and then twenty more people know my middle name because my not-dad thinks nicknames are casual flags for mood."

Where some people would take a moment to consider all of that, Tony Stark takes it in stride, reminding you that, right, you're talking to a Smart Guy - "I promise I use nicknames even when I'm cheesed. Maybe especially in the heat of an argument. Like you said, it's efficient." There's a short pause, a ruffle as if of paper. "And I make it a point to take a disagreement behind closed doors; simplifies things, saves face for everyone. Was that, uh, was that standard in your House, arguments?"

You depart the laundry room and hear Stark's audio switch from robot to overhead, a static backcharge, speakers priming above. "Not really. I just always disliked weaponizing the formal address. Bro would cuss me blue but he'd never pull my name out like it was an insult and I guess I just saw a lot of that happening, on like TV, in the quintessentially American Dens; the Megs always kinda put under thumb, infantilized - I already said that."

"Is that why you and Brodie stopped getting along?" Stark's voice doubles from a wide hall lined in windows, which you follow. "He talk down to you? Treat you like a kid, still?"

Your stomach goes cold. That might have been the story Bro told, sure, but you didn't have the time to confirm, the two of you, in every detail. You opt for the truth, to simplify any future deception. "Dunno what you mean, Mister--uh, Tony." You clear your throat, scratch your thumb down the side of your nose, glance out the wide seamless windows to the early autumn dark and the northern hemisphere forestry. "Got along fine with Bro. He treated me all right, trained me up." You hesitate, a little lost now trying to put it into words. "Didn't treat me like a kid, didn't even treat me like a 'Meg." Didn't even treat you like a person, sometimes - you were a tool, a weapon, a legacy of the Strider brand.

"Ah," Tony announces, as if in discovery. "That explains the running off."

The workshop is an open, split-level room with tape on the floors and junk on the thick metal desks. You lean a shoulder against the corner of the hall, arms crossed as you take it all in - the bright lighting, the scuffs and scorch marks on the cinder brick walls, the sheets draping the seasonal household trumpery stacked into a far corner. "I guess it does at that, Big Shoots."

Tony considers that nickname from his perch on a workbench, Squarewave plugged in to a desk console for code mapping. Tony wobbles his hand mid-air, so-so. For a fraction of a second you catch it - the softening of Tony's features, the slight widening of his eyes, common Alphahood response when espying the Omega across the open field, an interest or a concern, if not a want.

You aim a pair of finger-guns. "You know, shoots, pew-pew? Maybe you get the venerated title 'Big Red'?"

Tony dismisses that suggestion with a wave, which calls up a neon holograph display, dissecting Square's build as the diagnostic wires plumb ever deeper. "You're taller than me."

"Oh thank God someone said it," you exhale, loping across the mezzanine down the short flight of stairs to the workroom proper. Your sandals flap against your heels with every step, because you're not trying to walk soft. You'll probably never have to walk soft again, in this House. "That's a load off."

"Letter designations aren't really my thing," Tony continues the nickname debate, unfazed, tapping a few apps up into a wider mid-air display, bundling schematics with grabs and practiced air-tosses. "So no, you can't call me 'Tee'. Banner prefers to go by Banner, Doctor Banner if you're feeling patronized. Call Miss Potts, Miss Potts, even though she's technically Mrs. Stark. Happy is... well, he's Happy. It would be weird to stick an honorific in front of that, but go nuts. Hap, Happenstance, Sir Haps-a-Lot, whatever, he's a good sport." Tony talks with his hands, an affectation you never picked up with as much expression, unless you were excited or agitated or something. He sweeps his arms, tosses the air between his palms, shapes ideas.

"I am going to call you Sir Shoots-A-Lot," you promise, circling the furthest corner of the workspace to discover a parlor grand piano in white lacquer, shoved behind a spare desk and an upturned dining table and all six of its oak chairs. "Just a heads-up. It's in my brain now, incubating itself for the day it'll come flying out of my mouth, unbidden. I'll probably think I made it up. Credit to the original, here and now."

Tony side-eyes you over the arm of an engineering robot, a simple pivot-and-grab thing who trundles along on rubber tread and toots its transmission pistons in answer. "Now, you knowing Sir Mix-A-Lot, I could understand. Hip-hop's still relevant with your generation." Tony waves Sawtooth into the room, beckoning from his post at the door, but Sawtooth doesn't budge. 

You'll have to test Saw's parameters later, see if you can't find a recognition protocol to engage, open him up to orders from the rest of the Household.

"Queen is relevant with every generation and we get it, you're old enough to be my dad. We can stop beating that dead horse or it's gonna get weird. The horse will just be laying there, dead, gettin' beat. One of us will become aroused. Someone will hafta call PETA, and it'll be far too late to save anyone from further indignity, least of all the horse, but they'll do it." You take the piano bench to carefully unfold its clapboard, then plunk out a few slow chopsticks, the keys flat and smooth and cool under your fingers.

Tony scoffs, pats his grabberbot and approaches. "I think I'm supposed to say something here, some crossing-the-threshold conclusion, something obvious that will embarrass us both, but nah."

"Feelings mutual." You nod, a knot in your chest gone loose as Tony's dark silhouette enters your peripheral. That would take some getting used to, seeing real people with actual skintone, recognizing them as friendlies and not, you know, corporate spies or really brave journalists.

Tony takes the other side of the piano bench, elbows a little more room for himself, jerks his hands forward as if to clear them of shirtsleeves he isn't wearing. He lays into a song, something many-tiered and classical that you were never sent to school to learn, and it's pretty but flat, unemotional, technically correct. At first, every time Tony leans to reach the keys in front of you, you hold your breath against the threat of that proximity. About halfway through the movement, you're breathing easier, and even swaying a bit to keep close whenever Tony leans away. He's shorter than you, and darker than the Alpha you're used to, but he scents like authority, like calm stability, and you need that right now.

"Are you gonna die," you mumble against the softer lull of the song's refrain, because Tony also smells like sickness, still, like contamination and isolation and distress.

"We're all gonna die sometime, Champ."

"I'm not your champ, pal."

Tony's eyes crease with a smile that doesn't reach his mouth. "I'm not your pal, friend. Dane Cook bit; god, that's dated."

"Joe Rogan, actually. We always had cable."

The song changes, deepens, darkens. "You would have been what, two? When Rogan was popular? That's some sorta memory you've got, there."

"Hyperthymesia," you confess flatly, mouth pulled back in a shrug. "The psychs call it an anxiety disorder, and attribute vividly lasting memories with high stress, a constant lifelong sort of PTSD."

Tony stills over the keyboard, thoughtful. "Are _you_ gonna die?" he snarks, quietly, and picks the song back up.

You scoff, and replace Tony's hands with your own to continue the tune, repeating back what you'd heard so far. "Probably not, no. Maybe not ever."

Tony hums, considering. He chuffs his knuckles against his goatee and shifts his weight to watch you. "I'm on the mend," he admits, slow. "Came pretty close to the big finale, learned my lesson, made the necessary lifestyle changes, yadda yadda. Bit off more than I could chew, and other idioms. Any merit to Doctor Banner's theory on early exposure to violence, and the feraling of 'Megs therein?"

You lift your chin to acknowledge, concentrating on the song. "Not s'far as I can tell." Though that would explain the brother-fucking, shit. You chuckle, enjoying the inside joke. "Our Labcoats kept a real close eye on that kinda thing. Said we were built to handle the underground, like maybe they thought the portals led to the place our people started from." You hit the soft refrain and trail off, reaching a foot forward to depress the fade pedal, thigh to thigh with the man who won your Auction bid. "I think Brodie had more difficulty fitting in on Earth, anyway. A whole dimension, or planet or whatever, of things that can flash-step, like us? And mysteriously void of its more human-esque denizens, and those bugs always trying to get in under the radar?"

"Skykid portals materialized in the sky, and the bugland's portals opened up underground. That's nearly poetic - but it was still a warzone situation, don't you think?" Tony's hands shoo yours, tap out a bright melody, like something at the end of an old cartoon. 

"I think a Terran kid would have been feraled from awla that, sure." You almost let him know that Brodie was never feral, not really, but that would sabotage your entire story, so. You tuck your heel back but leave your knee open and, in inches and shifts, glue yourself against Tony's side, hip to ribs, listening to technically crisp piano strokes and the murmur of breath and blood through Tony's neck, your chin slotted against his shoulder, a makeshift Introduction you hardly realized you were initiating until it was going down. "You feel okay, though?" you mumble, compulsive concern.

"Like a million bucks," Tony quips, _vigilare_ stuttering from its rapid ascent. "And hey, Dee, you aren't trying to climb into my lap right now or anything, so I'm inclined to ignore Banner's suggestion that you are anything but 100% weirdo genius, completely domesticated and totally sane. Shitty taste in proto-reggae Califunk nonwithstanding."

You take a breath to snark back on behalf of Louie-dog if nobody else, and catch a taste of _other_ in the air, not Tony and not yourself and not the bots' transmission fluid. You straighten, the hair at the back of your neck standing on end the way it did when Bro used to lurk in the ceiling, and at a glance toward the mezzanine you catch sight of Rogers leaning on the same corner you had leaned, arms crossed loosely at his trim waist, expression distant like a concert audience. He is wearing a cotton t-shirt that suggests his uniform armors aren't all that padded, if at all, and the back of your throat is suddenly very dry.

"No," Tony drawls loudly, as if to answer an unasked permission, and restarts the first song, layering in a little more finesse after the warm-up.

Rogers' chin dips, mouth slanted to quash a smirk as Sawtooth allows him a manly stoic nod of greeting, since he was about as tall as Brodie and probably registered the same. Rogers pushes off from the wall and Tony stiffens beside you.

You understand the tension, or can guess at it - Tony Stark is injured, or ill or recovering, vulnerable. Rogers is an Alpha, whatever their friendship they are both Alphas, and you're here, now, whatever your designation within the House and its members, Tony is going to feel responsible, or challenged, or infringed against, just because you're there between them, existing. One of the many drawbacks of your station.

It follows the script, at least - that Tony asked you to feign ignorance, that you'd be here for a career and the seduction of one Captain Rogers a complete coincidence. So Tony would be wary, and Rogers would be oblivious; but you'd be what, exactly?

"No," Tony crabs again at Rogers' approach, slapping the piano's fallboard shut with a loud clatter that makes you startle. "C'mon, man, we've been over this. Lower floors, sure, fine. This is my _space."_

"Not here for you," Rogers says, well acclimated to Stark's prickliness. He pauses behind the nearest desk, jerks a greeting nod at you, half a beckon, expectant.

Nervous physiological puddling or not, you are _hella_ attracted to Captain SqueakyClean over there, whose khakis fit well enough but whose t-shirt was struggling to wholly contain him. Instead of trusting your legs, you chop out a single wave, expression carefully schooled. You're under Tony's custody, and only just got comfortable in the calming anchor of his Alphahood, and are also, to your surprise, extremely goddamn shy. You'd never had the chance to be shy about Bro, for obvious reasons, and had approached your friendship with Egbert at an angle of barely concealed superiority. You'd never, again to your surprised revelation, been in any sort of traditional courtship - nor even had to deal with adulthood socializing beyond a few professional attachments in the music industry, with all their clearly defined boundaries and rules. Your on-stage showboating was an easy mask to wear because it happened behind a literal mask, but that hardly seemed appropriate here.

Tony stands, chuckling, expression soft because the pheromone loudspeaker that is your stupid body is pleading for help. "Maybe later," he tells Rogers, hands in pockets, posture boastful.

You expect an argument, an insistence, a disappointment maybe - but Rogers only looks a little surprised, and not at all annoyed. You don't know what you've done right, if anything you do will ever be judged as wrong around here, at all. You aren't being put through your figurative paces, you haven't had your teeth inspected and aren't being grabbed up, haven't yet suffered the kind of torrid intimacy that is used to send television 'Megs through plot-based character development.

Rogers bows forward a bit at the waist, hands on hips, and studies your surroundings, brow crimping at the sight of Squarewave freed of his diagnostic wires, excitedly trembling at his own reflection in the floor-down windows. "Okay," he exhales. "But soon. I don't want any misunderstanding, if our team can't recognize Dave out of sight."

"They'll recognize me," Tony says, fists on hips now, too.

Rogers only purses his mouth, mildly surprised again as he straightens. "That's good to hear. Pepper suspected you'd want me to step in -"

"Nope, we're good here." But Tony's voice warms, lowers, "Unless you _want_ to step in."

Rogers, unruffled, nods his defeat. "We just don't want to leave you out of your depth, Tony. Or you, Dave."

Your ears burn and you grunt an errant thanks, unfolding the fallboard to lay into a melody of your own design, absorbing your attention from the parting conversation. You feel more than see Tony rejoin you on the bench, and hear the grabber bot whir its farewell as Rogers departs the workshop. "Not scared," you argue quietly, because Tony is managing a pretty impressive sitting hover, studying you intently. "Just embarrassed. I know I'm here as like, Housebait for the Captain, and I don't think I can just shove that genie back in its bottle and pretend that I'm not."

"You psyched yourself up for all the efficiency of a modern marriage, but arrive to find your Alpha damnably traditional," Tony assumes, with laserpoint accuracy. 

"Sorry." You switch to jazzhouse, because it matters less if you fuck up with jazz, fingers a bit sore from lack of practice, stuck in the curl of a sword grip, tendons warped. 

"Don't apologize." Tony's hands join yours and his fingers are much more flexible, probably owing to his trade in engineering, the song gone loose and meandering, a language unto its own. "I will have to actually scent you before we leave, though, and I think you'd have done better to let Rogers get it over with. Just for uh, future reference."

"Future preference," you correct, tugging a smirk up that you don't feel. "It's fine if I prefer you though, right? Wouldn't that make more sense, since I'm supposed to think I'm here under your custody?"

Tony interrupts the duet to wobble his hand, so-so-ish, and bumps your shoulder with his own on his lean to stand from the bench. "You're not here to sleep with me; might as well flirt with the next best option to present itself, right?"

You brace against the swell of hurt and offense, and try to shore up some nerve against the fact that uh, well, you don't know how to seduce anyone, beyond just showing up. You're aware that Bro's technique was spartan and nothing to write a cheap book about, nothing you could draw from as experience. "Usually, yeah," you lie. "Got me kind of fucked up, though, if I can't impress him. I won't have much in the way of options."

"You're always welcome here, Dave, I'm not nixing custody on the off chance Rogers chickens out." 

Your fingers stretch over the piano keys, then lay into the classical piece you'd memorised from earlier. "Sure, yeah, I appreciate that. But I'm going to need to find someone eventually. What are my options."

"Well, blockers, for one," Tony deadpans, wagging a wrench off a tall, thin table. "Not that dangerous pill crap, I mean the low-key hormone injections developed to keep soldiers scentless in the field. You don't have to do that if you don't want to, obviously, but it's an option."

"Lemme rephrase," you crack, a bitter hysteria creeping in. _"Who_ are my options." Because you might not be able to chisel your way in to Captain Rogers' favor in time for your next (first) Heat, but if you went on suppressants that'd be just plain giving up.

"I can't promise to know that about my team, D, I'm just the man in the can."

"Great." You exhale, and fold the fallboard carefully over still-thrumming keys to stand, bench scuffing the sealed cement floor. "Perfect. Can I just tell Rogers the truth? Because this is stupid. I feel _stupid."_

"Savant syndrome," Tony announces, cheek pulling back to flash a long dimple. He drops the wrench, leans back against the table. "You're so used to being the smartest guy in the room that you can't handle the concept of failure." He pats your shoulder as you join him in the lean, squeezes. "I bet Rogers would - scratch that, I _know_ Rogers would appreciate some honesty, but no. You're doing me a solid, here, giving him the chance to back out gracefully if you don't exactly click. You're doing yourself a favor, too, actually, if you leave yourself the option to fail."

You hum uncertainly. "Says the guy who's never had to suffer a Heat in his whole privileged life."

Tony shrugs forward, scoffs, exasperated. "So we'll _buy_ you someone. Rent you a professional, whatever, it'll be _fine._ I'm not going to let you sweat it out alone, Dave, you do have options."

"Wull," you toss your hands forward, curling your toes to crack their knuckles, a fidget. "I mean, I'll take the shots before I'll fuck a stranger. Thanks much."

"No offense intended, slugger; it's the 21st century and I think Megs should be able to do what they want, is all." Tony hooks a finger in to tug at your hospital bracelet. "Who is Hilde Baumgarter?"

"A hilarious Alias." You hide that wrist behind yourself, as if to protect dear sweet Hilde. "Records are in Houston General, if you need some medical data."

Tony's surprise carries an edge, this time, and he gives you a bit of distance, respectfully. "That would be really great, yeah. I was going to warm you up to our medical team, get Bruce to hold your hand through an exam or something. I take it you're not as paranoid about hospitals as Brodie?"

You turn at the waist to inspect a science-y bauble in the clutter of the table, palm-sized and boxy with several moving parts. "Uh. Yeah, I didn't suffer any of what Bro had to go through." You don't even try to curb the recrimination in your tone, certain now this wasn't a House to demand any meek shows of submission. "With the whole Area 51 bullshit he broke free from. So I'm a little more forgiving of the health care profession."

Tony lifts his chin, reclined back against the piano with the heels of his hands braced on its lacquered edge. "What do you make of that thing you've got there?" He changes topic, easily - or maybe he's just the scatter-brained sort, distracted by the next new thing to snag his passing glance.

"Alien," you guess, hefting the bauble and spinning a few of its gears. "I don't recognize the metal, edges are organic, no seam for a mold, and it smells weird. Definitely part of something larger, maybe not an essential part but a modification or some sort of refill for something."

"Gun clip, for a Chitauri rifle," Tony awards quietly, eyes glinting with interest. He shifts his weight, and doesn't sober from that warming pride. "Saw a lot of random alien shit through those sewer doors, did you?"

"Yep. Lots." You set the ammo clip back to the table. "You hungry, man? I'm hungry."

"I could eat." Tony jerks forward, smiling. "Assume the position."

You sigh theatrically and face your brand new guardian, arms out and feet planted apart as if for a pat-down. "Whatever you find, officer, I'm only holding for a friend."

Tony's poff of breath hits your neck and you don't flinch and this doesn't suck and it's not awkward and you feel... something. Still a bit weird, like you haven't got your landlegs back, and still a bit stiff and unyielding because wow Stark really does smell like so much ouch, but you _feel something_ and it's not bad and chases the ache from the back of your lungs to the back of your knees and the back of your jaw. Tony pushes his wrist behind your ear and curls his fingers through your shower-damp hair to tug your head aside a little and you lean into him and struggle to keep your eyes from rolling out of your skull, nerves electrified, starved for it.

Tony scents you down proper in a snug embrace and you have to swallow back the urge to coo once or twice, biologically predisposed to meeting bad health with all kinds of hells of sympathy. "I'm going to make you chicken soup," you promise in a husk, and force your fingers uncurled from Tony's thermal. "Unless you're a vegetarian, in which case I will make you a steak, to treat some obvious deficiencies."

Tony mumbles against the cradle of your neck, a soft ramble, "Bruce is an herbivore, but one of his doctorates is in biomolecular science so I think it's more a lifestyle choice than anything. It's not like quinoa is bad for you, so we let him head a few dinners every once in a while." He shifts his weight, prom-dance closing in as his wrists rub firmer circles behind your shoulders, up your ribs to scent just shy of your armpits, mixing you two together. "Steve will eat literally anything, but I think that's more from his humble beginnings than any lack of appreciation for cuisine."

"Does he have like a," you start, and cough to try and clear the Omegan strain from your monotone of chill. "Does Rogers have a file, like I do? So I can do some homework, maybe, get the relationship fast-tracked?" You've never suffered a Heat alone, Brodie always close at hand (and to your ignorance, have never suffered a Heat at all, not any worse than a suppressed trip to fevertown, Brodie always close at hand). You sure as shit aren't going to rent some fluffed up marital aide like you're too disfigured to get laid for free, fuck's actual sake.

Tony grunts assent, pats your ribs before pulling away. "We all do, technically. Psychological profiles, marketable skills, personal preferences, all that." He plucks a small wrench from a table as he passes, wags it at you. "You can dig those up on your own. Give that gigantic over-achiever of a brain of yours a bone to gnaw."

"Or I could just ask Steve to his face. I have a feeling he's the kind who's got nothing to hide."

"Or you could just ask Steve," Tony agrees, dropping the wrench in its toolbox. 

You've followed without noticing, and almost collide as Tony pivots on heel. "Woah," you husk.

"Woah," Tony grunts at the same time, hands up. "Okay, I've already got a shadow, thanks." He holds a finger up, pausing your quip. "Don't ask Steve. You're playing it shy, you ask Steve's _friends._ Because you don't know, what, if he's whatever, single or pining or married to his job, right?"

You aren't 'playing it' any type of way, because you are genuinely shy, but ok whatever. "I'm asking you," you remind slowly, hands also up. "On the assumption that you're Steve's friend."

"I... am Steve's counterpart," Tony hedges, hands now wobbling as if searching for the words in the air. "And I can tell you a few things, sure. But it's not the info you're after, it's the impression that you're interested."

"I am interested."

"Yeah, _I could tell,"_ Tony says, spun now toward the hall, moving at a clip. "And it's no difference to me what sort of impression you're trying to make despite the Coyote-Wiley dust cloud of 'interest' you like to give off, but so far you've _acted_ lukewarm to downright cold."

"Uh," you warble, a little irked. "You told me to."

"I asked you to act _natural,"_ Tony argues.

You scrub fingers through your hair, exhaling hard. "I don't exactly _have_ a 'natural'. In case you haven't noticed, Rogers is a babe, and that ain't easy to talk to."

"And all your other boyfriends were, what?"

The shrug perches in your voice. You'd already rebuffed that shitty lie twice, but if the story upheld Bro's machinations for your mission, then, fine? "Texan," you guess, because you hadn't even gotten as far as to develop the fictional people you were supposed to have been fucking in Brodie's stead.

The joke lands, Stark awards a generous grimace and dramatically presents the open elevator doors. "Let's go get some meat on those bones, Ziggy."

You frown, and step into the elevator with recovering confidence. "Marley?"

Tony's expression leaps to savor a reference you're finally too young to understand. "Stardust."

* * *

The ground floor dining room was centered between a bower commons with wide tinted windows, and the hallway foyer sheltering the elevators. The open kitchen was halfway built to a cafeteria, industrial but compact, stools gathered around a gleaming counter island, nothing so intimate like a dining table but definitely a well-used space by all the scuffs, knife-holes and burn char pocking the metal worktops. You appreciate the double-wide fridge and top-hinge freezer, a little self-conscious that the dry stock and groceries are all distinctly Tex-Mex, frijoles and fresh meat, rice and corn over wheat or dairy, that sort of thing.

Tony and Banner dominate the island counter with their excitement over the time-space breakthrough Bro had so indolently delivered into their lives, Nat perched on a stool at the left peninsula and Rogers on the right, a wide-eyed young Ace referred to as Parker on the kitchen side of the island to study you from a distance. The others mill about similarly - Happy ('call me Happy, I wouldn't know how to answer to anything else'), May Parker, Beta Aunt of the Ace ('Pete, God's sake, you trying to catch flies, close your mouth'), the indomitable Pepper Potts in all her gently smiling patience, and a spindly blonde British man in expensive business-casual wear referred to as 'V'.

You crack a beer for yourself to ease your bloodsugar and freeze time to knock it back so nobody can give you any scrutiny over your age or whatever, then grimace because the beer is some sort of import stout, hefty and bitter. You unpause the room to start pulling the fridge and cabinets free of the ingredients to make chicken chili, dirty rice, and empanadas. Blessedly the task of cooking dinner splits your poor, stupid, nervous brain from its hamster-wheel panic in the wash of all those furtive glances, giving you a focus, a set of goals, and you can speak a little easier whenever you're addressed, despite the tingle behind your ears every time Rogers' friendly burr elbows in through the mumbled reminders, in-jokes and stone-cold mission reports. A young redheaded woman in jogging sweats and pillowmarks washes up and joins you at your elbow to help crimp the empanadas, no introduction yet.

The team you came in with are dressed in day clothes, relieved of their armor and scrubbed of monster guts, florid scents of cooperation and good will that you haven't yet sorted to each.

"What's with all the gingers," you whisper aside to the young unintroduced woman, testing the oil in its saucepan for the empanadas' deep fry. "I mean for representing less than seven percent of the population, there are three of you here. You guys sisters?"

"Probably," Wanda Maximoff answers just as quietly in a thick Sokovian accent, and then introduces herself as Wanda Maximoff. "I would shake your hand, but your hands are busy." She smells like an Alpha, all high steel and the waft of sun on an open raspberry field, weapon smoke and dyed leathers, and you're a little twitchy now because a Pack might have two, three Alphas but so far you count five and it's no wonder Tony was going to keep you around even if you failed mission, this place needed some mitigating and its Betas looked about as overworked as you'd expect.

You dip your chin to put some space between you and Rogers' approach at the sink, to check on the dirty rice, add a few more onion pearls, pare a green pepper down to strips to caramelize for garnish. Wow though, Stark was right, you are a low to simmering sort of hostile toward Captain GoddamnGorgeous-I-SaidGoddamn, an impulse to act out against the indignity of having such an immediate, overpowering crush on someone you weren't sure you could impress. You were probably half as bad to Egbert when you first met; to the good luck that John found aloof kids 'cool', securing his admiration. The only thing you were securing with Steve-o-matic over there was a foot and a half boundary of personal space.

And Rogers smells, ridiculously, like _apples,_ a crisper, more northern sort of rainy orchard scent than your own, like he'd be apple cider and you'd be warm, southern apple pie all dough and corn syrup to the blame of the gallons of pre-processed, cheap-ass AJ you've knocked back over your lifetime. Rogers smells like he straightup eats apples, as in the fruit, fiber and skin and all, literal apple-a-day bullshit, like some sort of healthy adult with functional dietary habits or something. So you leave Rogers the space to catch up with Wanda, an aura of sexless anathema between them, the clad of ward and authority.

'V' rescues the large pot of chili from overboiling and you let him have your station to fry the empanadas, his prim and almost apologetic expertise an easy replacement for your efforts, which were hearty but not primed to make so much food for so many people - as even for your own Striderian supra-human appetites you and Brodie were only ever just the two of you. V doesn't smell like anything at all, and by his single-letter designation you assume him a robot, or android or whatever; or an alien, maybe, or mutant - it'd be rude to ask, right?

You pluck an apple from the wicker bowl on the island, and press its cool waxy skin against your mouth and chin to waft it experimentally, eyes narrowed, trying to find Steve in there somewhere. 

"It doesn't bite back, I promise," Doctor Banner teases, corny dad humor that makes your heart literally goddamn throb.

"Maybe it _would_ bite back, but it's too shy," you start, and like a snowball chucked down a hill your nonsense only gains mass with momentum, cigarette-drawl conspiratorially low. "And you've got to get the conversation started or this apple will leave you for a much younger banana, but that relationship will also fail because it never got comfortable with asking for what it likes and _you could have helped it_ break that cycle, man, you're failing this tender little -"

"OKAY," Tony blurts, smacking the top of the counter to save Banner from the horrifying avenues that ramble had not yet begun to explore. "The victory for absurdist humor, it is yours, Dave we're about to _eat._ Don't make it weird."

"I want to hear what happens with the banana," Miss Potts insists gently, folding her hand under her chin with a cool gleam of humor in her eyes. "Does it know it's just a rebound, a practice against which the apple will commit its routine mistakes, or does it learn to be better than the apple, to ask for what it w-"

"I said okay," Tony _whines,_ which does funny things to the core of your pelvis.

"Well the banana always bites back," you answer, deadpan. "That's why the apple got with it, see, it wanted to learn how to be that confident."

"I will _die,"_ Tony announces, grim. "If you finish this story."

Pepper shares a conspiratorial smirk over the rim of her mug of tea and another puzzle piece of you tumbles into the larger picture that makes up this Pack, despite your (shy? aloof?) reprieve from traditional introduction-grabbery. Pepper raises her eyebrows and lowers her eyelids to fend off Tony's accusations of collusion. You glance away from Tony's redirected attention to equally feign innocence, catch an eyeful of the solid line of the back of Rogers standing at the sink. Your furtive study of 'what dat ass do in those khakis tho' is interrupted by the nagging prickle of being watched - Parker's saucer eyes dart quickly away when you turn to meet the inspection. "Sup," you greet, but Parker only closes his mouth a little firmer and asks his aunt an undefined permission with his stare.

"What," May stage-whispers, a sun-kissed brunette in turquoise jewelry and mom slacks. "Use your words, Pete."

Pete does not use his words. Pete goes red all around his neck and ears, and turns back to watch the kitchen instead. By the time you had arrived on this planet, see, Omegas had become somewhat of a rarity in the populous; and coupled with the fact that all the 'Megs of Pete's generation would have been pulled from school years ago, you were probably the only age-adjacent Megan he'd seen full fetter, if there were none in his family.

"Pete says hi," May says, offering a long, tan hand across the island. "I'm May. You're Dave, right?"

"That's the rumor." You take May's hand and buss the air above her knuckles.

"Smooth," Tony says, an irk of mock-jealousy. "Nevermind the moves out of this one, May, he's bent."

"Tony!" Pepper and Banner chorus. 

But you're laughing a little, because that was a fairly direct way of hinting to Rogers that you're interested in other dudes, and then you're laughing _hard,_ stifled as you pinch your readers off your nose to scrub your eyes with the back of your wrist. You wonder if Tony actually knows how true that is, that you're also 'bent' for other Megs, the truely taboo love that dare not fucking speaks its name.

"Oh?" May carries on, another picture of grace. "Do you have a boyfriend back home, Dave?" She taps the countertop to try and save you from your fit. The spirit of the question is to prompt another tall tale, you're certain, but.

"I have a _Meg,"_ you gasp, surfacing to catch your breath. "Gnuh. Closer to New York than he ever was to Texas. DC, in fact." You wipe your eyes, replace your shades, hoo-hooing softly in the back of your throat, half impulsively replaying the deadpan of Tony's not-insult, cherishing his blithe destruction of any and all social grace, godbless.

You can see the sobriety descend Tony's expression, eyebrows lowering, mouth slack, then the eyes, hardening, just a bit.

You're not cowed, and it's not a mistake, and you don't care that the kitchen has gone quiet, that you might as well stuff both feet in your mouth because it was one thing to be into dudes and joke about it, but. Of the Homosexuality that used to see bars tossed and people jailed, sure, Meg-on-Meg wasn't the worst; some Alpha could still put a litter in each and that was just called a family. But it's still not the most socially championed thing to be, Duty to the State and all, wasting reproductive resources against your own orientation like that. You shove your hands in your pockets and don't have to fake your temerity. "His name's John and he works alongside his dad in the FBI."

You pull out your phone, gamely ignoring Tony's close pestering hover, the hungry snap of his curiosity like the burn of a stagelight over your shoulder. "This is the most recent pic I've got." You slide the phone over, warm all down your chest, proud of how beautifully Megan John had turned out to be, his overbite grown to a more shy bunny bucktooth than the donkey-laughing derp he had been as a kid. In the photo John is laughing, pale and soft at the edges, the floof of his black hair caught in the wild tousle of the wind, blue eyes wet, pretty dark lashes clumping together with tears because you must have really set him off.

"Oh, wow," May is just as surprised as the rest, but seems to be handling it well. From most, there is blithe acceptance, Natalie already knowing as much and Bruce following her complete lack of surprise, the polite attempt to restart conversation so as not to eavesdrop, none of the affront of anyone who might feel deceived, or offended.

Except Tony, who wouldn't have read that in your file but brought you here to a specific end, and Rogers who knows why you're here, but doesn't know that you know. You're almost afraid to inspect Rogers' corner of the kitchen, but he turns with a stack of plates to hand off to Parker for table-setting (at a given value of table, the counter island high and the stools backless). Rogers pauses beside May to inspect John, and you manage to look up, face the music. 

Rogers looks... fine. A little more than fine, actually, a grin creasing his eyes but guarded from his mouth, maybe something like relief, if relief was supposed to make sense in a situation like this. "Kind smile."

"He's the best," you agree, and you're burning up, the pit of your groin to the back of your ears. You can still feel Tony's hard stare as you accept your phone back, but can't look away from Rogers, from Steve, from calm and borderline jovial Alpha acceptance all wrapped up in a pretty golden package and tied with an exceptionally muscly bow. 

It's Parker who breaks the spell, having rounded the island to set the last of the plates. He taps you on the shoulder, a fairly grave trespass Alpha to Omega, unintroduced and unranked - but at closer inspection you realize Parker is _young,_ younger than you actually, despite the steel in his posture and the general air of respect given over by the Pack, which softens the offense. A whole different room lights up within the chambers of your mind, an empty space suddenly yawned into existence and illuminated, the door labeled 'House Meg', the first piece of furniture within occupied by Peter Parker and his big stupid doe eyes. 

"Sup, lil' man," you prompt, and it's almost Brodie telegraphed in those words but for your inflection, honeyed and human and glad to forgive.

The decision plays out across Parker's expression, whether or not he should take offense at the endearment, from which angle to approach the introduction, as an Alpha or a Ward of the Pack. He gauges your height and makes the right choice, averts his eyes and tilts his chin to bare his neck. You grin, the heat in your stomach given transition into the warm fuzzy variety, and half-stand from your stool to tap a quick Intro over Parker's ear, a headbutt really, half a hug, like you've done for your fanbase a dozen times over.

"I'm uh, Peter," he mumbles into your neck, and the heat of his blush is like a brand under your chin. He smells more like Rogers' custody than anything else of his own, yet, a bit savoury like his Beta Aunt perhaps but otherwise null, blank, the base notes of a living body in all its modern soaps and detergents. You don't know what you were expecting.

You retake your seat and let your grip fall from Peter's arm to his wrist, to his hand, counting the bones of a wide palm and long fingers. He'll be tall, when he's grown; which is why he looked so grown already. "Dave," you repeat, and your name has stopped making sense to you for as often as you've said it today.

"I'm also Sp-" Parker's mouth firms, his grip closes around yours. "I'm Spiderman."

Natalie, on the stool behind him, rolls her eyes and silently departs her seat so Parker isn't hovering.

You're a little lost. Spiderman was a grown-ass crime fighting clown who helped little old ladies cross the mean streets of New York. He was in the news but definitely not in the headlines. He had an online donation fund and a viral video channel. Your skepticism almost gives you an eyebrow cramp, but then you can feel the small gripping barbs flex out from Parker's fingertips and decide not to insult him with any incredulity.

"Boss," you congratulate coolly, nodding as Parker takes the vacated stool beside yours.

"So what do you do," Parker blurts, shifting awkwardly to try and find a comfortable resting place for his elbow, on the table or his knee or in the cross of his arms.

"I make chicken soup," you deflect, jerking a nod over your shoulder back at Tony. "For sick dudes with sick tech."

Parker blinks, aborts the shake of his head. "Mno, I mean what -"

"I know what you meant. Go get some soup."

To your surprise, Parker actually departs to get some soup, passing the bowls of chili around the table as plates are piled with food, emptied of food almost as fast. Nobody waits for rank, probably because there are so many of equal or contestable rank present, and places are traded in the kitchen to keep the meal building, changing, a second pot of chili started from the first. Nor is there any typical television trope of ceremony around the meal, no compliment or criticism, food a necessary staple of life and living, fuel for the ravenous machines that had been made of the superhuman bodies gathered around.

The more mundane of your party tap out of the feeding frenzy first, of course, and fall into the habitual clearing of the table as you, Rogers, Parker and Natalie take on a third course.

Parker and Natalie are smaller than you and Rogers, however similarly hyped their metabolisms, and while the island is still peopled with coffee-takers and beer sipping it's just you and the Captain left to execute any hope of leftovers. You could eat every hour of the day and never get the chance to feel any discomfort about it, and it looks like Rogers is the same, neither sluggish nor drowsy nor wary of the next beer, which disappears like a sip of water.

"So really," Parker says over the smush of his cheek resting on his fist, watching you with starry-eyed focus. "What can you do."

You roll a cream-cooled slug of coffee around your mouth before swallowing, and suck a molar with an audible chirp of air as ceramic mug carefully meets metal countertop. "Ikebani."

Parker's expression lightens, and he sits up straight. "Oh, is that, that's what. Is that like kung-fu?"

Tony, a worldly soul, is chuckling. "No Pete, it's not."

"That's wonderful," Miss Potts says, elbows on counter to better listen, slim fingers clasped around her mug. "Do you practice calligraphy, too?"

Pete's chin draws back with a frown, and May consoles him with a chuckle and an arm pat.

"We never had enough space in the house for _shodo,_ but I used to study _kintsukuroi_ at the community college. As a kid." It went without saying that after a certain age community college would have been a risk, and Bro had really gone hard on the whole warrior artist, child prodigy dig.

"You took a college course as a kid?" May demands, incredulous. "So did Pete!"

"What's kinst-stukori," Parker hastily overrides his aunt, hands shoved in pockets and knee bouncing nervously.

"It's like an old repair process that fixes broken pottery with a gold or platinum dusted lacquer. It's mostly a, uh," you scratch the side of your nose, nod a thanks as Rogers takes your empty plate to stack atop his own. "Museum Curator sort of gig, nowadays, since people use glass or plastic in the house and can afford to just chuck whatever breaks."

"We've seen that, at the Guggenheim," May encourages in her earnest provincial enthusiasm, which is visibly destroying her nephew's teenaged dignity brick by brick. "Did you want to work in a Museum, when you were little?"

You have to inhale to stop the bitter chuckle, hide the ill slant of your smirk behind a sip of coffee. "No," you answer, simply. You had collected dead things as a kid, a sort of morbid and ironic decor of bones and fossils along your bedroom walls to match the angst of your self awareness, gone full alien hoarding samples of the planet you had fallen to. Maybe Brodie had taken this as an interest in curation, and sent you to the college every Tuesday and Thursday after school to foster that interest, but the rigor of the coursework had quickly overcome any enjoyment of your hobby and turned it into just another job, another performance, another discipline to master.

"Bro was really... cultural."

May glances between you and Parker, as if asking the kid to 'get a load of this', unsubtle matchmaking if ever there was. "You've got a brother?"

You want to play it cool, casual, normal. You want a lot of things that you're just never going to get. "Not any more," you croak, a shoulder hitched up in apology for the awkward confession. "Not really. If you could call him a brother in the first place, even. His name is Broderick, so I just call him 'Bro' for short, kind of a," you clear your throat, sit forward. "A joke. He's more like a mentor. Have you ever heard of Houston?"

May blinks, brow furrowed in that new-age schoolmarm concern of interest, though she couldn't be old enough to have mothered Parker, even. "The city?"

You nod, and the kitchen conversation has lulled to listen to you. "The city and the Guardian of that city." And here you answer Pete's original question, sort of. "He wasn't a Strider until he took me on for a partnership, mostly underground work, disaster mitigation, regular science fiction shenanigannery with alternate dimension portals and the ugly kinds of things that could come through those." You pause to let May process this. "I was the second Strider, Houston's ward. He filed me as family for legal protections but wasn't - uh, isn't what you would call exactly fraternal."

"Oh," May breathes, nodding.

"So yeah, I have a brother. And no, ma'am, I don't."

"Family can be complicated," May sympathizes. "He did a good job, anyway, whatever Broderick was to you."

Tony has pulled something up on his phone, not only forgiving of May's penetrating interrogation technique but kindred spirit in their blithe disregard for conversational tact. "Houston," he illustrates, the photo onscreen something the press had managed to scope last year.

May whistles low, meets your eye, deadass, "Is he single?"

"May!" Parker laments, nearly twisting off his stool in horror.

"Uhb," you puff, honestly considering the question, and decide to lie magnificently. "Fucker could have a wife and kids in the Alps who all think he sells water purifiers door to door, for all I know. 'Scuse my french."

"So you're not really close, huh."

Tony comes to your rescue, "Nobody could ever say they were _close_ to Houston. So not exactly boyfriend material." He retrieves his phone, thumbs the lock screen. "Kind of a hermit. Married to his work. Would _hate_ your macrame."

You subtly spit-take into your coffee, covering the hiccough with a loud slurp. May slaps the air beside Pepper with the back of her hand and Pepper passes the swat along to Tony's arm.

You plant your elbow on the island, point at May, "He would _love_ your macrame, actually, don't listen to that slander."

Tony shows his hands and sits back in exaggerated apology and May is laughing, wine-blushed and generous of spirit, a hidden spark of hard-earned cynicism surfacing every now and again that even manages to shake Parker out of his mortification once or twice. You decide that you like May Parker for all of how normal she is, her bravery, the tenacity behind her affection for her nephew and the humor she could make at his expense, at her own.

"So what did you do, when you worked down in Texas?" Parker pries again, persistent. "With this Houston guy?"

"That's Mr. Houston Guy to you, Spiderbabe," you correct haughtily. "And I mostly just did me some winning."

"Right, but like, how? Are you really strong, do you engineer tech or something like that?" He fidgets a drumroll against the countertop, an avid audience.

You open your mouth to answer, but then pause, sigh quietly through your nose, and close your mouth with a chewing frown. "You want to know if I can kick your ass," you hazard, and at Parker's calcified expression know you're right. "You want to know, among the people gathered here, who I could defeat, and in what way."

"I'm a little curious about that, myself," Doctor Banner interjects from behind Tony, handing off an iPad with some call or task that begs Tony away from the table. Banner takes Tony's vacated stool, and hands Tony's coffee to Pepper, who excuses herself with a dip and a murmur.

You're a little put off that Parker's open-eyed schoolkid gambit almost worked against your better judgement, that you had underestimated him as an Alpha of the Pack and a prodigy in his own right (at May's confession) but whatever, live and learn.

At your stalled silence, Banner only smiles with a tuck of his chin, forgiving. "I turn into an invulnerable green rage-monster who's cursed me to live forever, so I doubt you can top that."

You flicker, and a time clone joins Rogers at the sink, drying plates from the wire rack as he rinses. It takes two, three more clones before everyone in the Pack notices, and you sit in place, stirring your refreshed coffee, flickering.

"What," Parker breathes, poking one of you to test if you're real. And, because it's you, your clones are carrying on conversations, cracking jokes, soothing a very frazzled Happy and assuring a nervous Wanda Maximoff, who shares a static defensive charge with V.

Ten, twenty, fifty of you fill out the commons, in various outfits, from various timelines, at various states of scarring or haircut or sunburn or sleepless stagger. "Well I'm a God," you explain evenly, rubbing a wrist behind your ear to self-soothe, covering the habit up with a skritch through your hair. There's a sharp vacuum zip of air and the room is altered, snapped into array, emptied of litter and dishes and time clones but filled to brimming with your scent, helplessly left behind. "Of time. So."

You straighten to take a sip of your coffee, a lone slurp in the dead silence, every set of eyes turned your way.

You set your coffee mug down, a hollow ring of ceramic on metal.

May chuckles, low and throaty. _"Hot."_

"A God," Natalie prompts, her pretty mouth downturned in doubt.

Tony pushes in between you and Parker, pointing down at you from his chest, a squished reprimand. "Don't do that," he advises, and pauses in place to wait for your nod, nods along. "Yeah, don't. Please. Gave me vertigo." He slides away again, returned to his iPad and Pepper's unruffled company.

"A God," you confirm, turning in your seat to watch Tony depart, watch him try to shake loose the line of tension in his shoulders.

"Under whose designation," Natalie asks, tapping Parker's elbow to vacate him from her stool. She drags the seat closer, knees tucked up against the side of your thigh, expression open.

"Um," you rub your arm, shrug. "We never got designated by any medical offices, no. I don't die." To Banner, who had sat forward in interest, "I mean I do die, but I come back."

"That's not something we want to even _try_ to replicate in a lab," Banner assures, you or the Pack or himself. "So we'll just take you on your word. Is your brother - or, or your not-brother, is he a, a that, too?"

You shrug, miserably resigned to know little enough about the man who raised you, resigned to have to lie about the information you had. "I suppose he might be, if the condition is hereditary."

"It's not," Banner informs you, informs the group. ",Godhood', or immortality as we know from our Asgardian allies, isn't a biological state of being so much as it's an access to a commonality between universes. Our friend Thor, for instance, was denied access to this universal multi-existence, and again granted access to it, at the whims of whomever, or whatever keeps the gates to those particular roads. Your brother might not have been granted the same commonality across timelines, the same access to his patron element." He shrugs, slow to admit - "By all criteria, the Hulk is a God, too."

You grunt, impressed. "Not just a pretty green face, hey."

"No," Natalie agrees, smirking.

"Well that," May slaps both hands on the counter, pushes herself to a stand. "Is _so_ fucking cool. Pardon my French."

"Very cool," Wanda seconds, side-eying Rogers, who has braced his hands along the now empty sink, head bowed in thought or study or recovery. "Might we spar? Are you free on Sundays?"

You glance around the room, roll a shoulder back. "Ehh. I'm kind of retired."

Rogers' chin lifts, blue eyes showing.

"Only kind of. Avenging, sure, fine, I'll go where Stark points me. But I'm kind of over it, the sparring and the training and the endless mission debriefs and the blah de blah," you twist your hand on your wrist, illustrating your exhaustion. "I mean I guess you could ask if you think you need to improve something with a few hundred moving dummies, but I've had my lifetime's full of kicks to the teeth, thanks."

Nat widens her eyes at you a little. "How are you at hand to hand," she asks evenly.

You blink slow and hard, and toss your chin to bare your neck. "Well I used to be better than average, better against my fellow third-graders at least," you drawl, now a little offended, yourself. You wouldn't be able to keep up a fight against an Alpha, even if they were some wheezy office worker, even if it was only a spar - your receptiveness to Alpha mood and command would wreck any intent to move against them, so you'd be skint for use against the type of megalomaniacs the Avengers neutralized on the reg.

Natalie's grin only widens, warms. "Against me," she amends, against her own Omega self, void of any handicap between you. "If you refrain from the universal commonality to which you've been granted access."

You hum doubtfully in the back of your throat, the kitchen otherwise recovered from the multiDave encounter, small conversations picking up again. You'd only ever trained against other Daves, and then at the mimicry of the underground speedbeasts you were employed to defeat.

"Let him be retired, Miss Romanov," May insists, throwing a wink your way over her wine glass. "Big empty Den like this, needs its share of lounging Megwives in curlers and bunny slippers."

"I do have the bunny slippers," you contend, finger-guns for the support. "But I'm more of a shower-cap housemeg, personally. Club some villains with a rolling pin, wield _la chancla_ at any homestead intruders, it'll be sweet."

Parker leans back to peer around Natalie, to inspect you head to toe. "You're-" he squeaks like bad AC, clears his throat, tries again. "You're kidding."

"I am _so_ kidding," you admit, pushing away from the table. "C'mon, Maximoff, let's go get matching bruises, braid each others' hair and talk about boys."

Wanda glances up from her furtive conversation with Rogers to half-smile, wave a promise to join you.

Natalie inhales sharp, shakes her head and follows your stand. "Well at least we know you're good at subterfuge," she awards dryly.

Parker stands, too, bouncing on his heels. "May, could I go with -"

"Sure, Pete, go ahead and go get your ass kicked," May cackles. "Dave, it was good to meet you. Try not to Picasso my nephew's face, no matter how much guff he gives he's still got school and I still answer to the social workers."

The goodbyes drag a little, jokes and hugs and schedule swapping, and by the end of it it's Rogers, Natalie, Wanda and Pete who take you down an elevator ride and further into the warrens of the complex to a brightly lit gym. This is the second floor of the seven hidden under ground, but there are fake windows with simulated sunlight streaming in through programmable scenery, and as ever the air is filtered, fresh, inoffensive. You're impressed, and bolstered by the feeling of being on a spaceship, which you often fantasized about when the Texan summer nights pressed in a little too close and it was just you and the rooftop and the deep black of a moonless sky.

Parker and Rogers claim the springboard with a few tumbles that make your back ache in sympathy - they aren't doing soft falls, and it's too close to the way Brodie used to throw you around, your throat gone thick with homesickness watching Parker's very spidery rebound off a far wall. You follow Wanda to a bare corner with its cement flooring taped in squares, hair standing on end as Wanda starts to goddamn _glow._

"Not even going to do some stretches, first?" you snark, and have to flash to duck a sweeping whisk of whatever that purple-red light is.

"I sparred against speed early in training," Wanda admits in her stilted English, then lowers her arms, powers down. "To learn control, not to blow holes in the walls."

You blink your eyes open a little wider, hands on hips. "Sorry?" You bend at the waist as if to better hear.

"The walls," Wanda continues, reaching back to pull her hair up in a loose bun. "When I practice, it's to build restraint. If I lose control, it could devastate whole cities, take many innocent lives."

You nod slow, jaw clenched. "So it's easier if your sparring partner is invulnerable to any mishaps."

"Bruce is too slow, his Hulk too large and lumbering." Wanda claps the side of your arm, an appreciation. "You are just right, like my old partner."

"Cool, cool," you nod more, can't stop nodding. "Coolcoolcool."

Forewarning prickles at the base of your skull before Natalie's forearm wraps around your throat from behind, and she's strong but she's not very big and the spar is _on,_ not a soft roll or a kid glove to be seen, a familiar trip back into getting thrown, attempting to throw, failing miserably to unfoot your opponent. You're fast when you want to be, but you aren't superhuman strong like Bro or John, and now you aren't superhuman strong like Parker or Rogers or Natalie either, apparently.

"I thought you said you were better than average," Nat teases, dusting her hands together before she helps you back to your feet.

"I thought I said I was retired," you grouse, relenting her helping hand to rub at your lower back. "Besides, Striders didn't fight _people,_ and against the things we did fight, we used all sorts of technological cheatery. Like swords."

"And teleportation," Rogers adds helpfully from the side bench, where Pete has joined him to stare at you some more.

You make a doubtful noise in the back of your throat. "Not exactly what that is, no. But close. Like, if teleportation could ever be a thing, what I do is probably how it would work."

"So how does it work?" Parker asks.

You scrunch your frown up to the side. "You know at this point I think it's just become A Thing that I not tell you. Like the anticipation has been built up too much, and now I don't want you to be disappointed."

Parker shifts his weight and crosses his arms and his mouth goes all slanty and offended. "My parents worked in the particle science field alongside some of the world's best biomolecular engineers. I'm not, uh, not looking to be _impressed,_ just informed."

"Woh," you husk, schooling your features down into stony distance. You hold up your hand, back a stiff line. "Nerd. Alert."

Parker goes from slightly alarmed to flatly exasperated. "Oh. Hah." He wags an arm out to stand. "Yeah, okay, you got me there."

"Some of my favorite people are nerds," you amend, posture returned to its mask of ease. "Everyone I know, in fact." Maybe not Dadbert, or maybe Dadbert was what nerds grew up into, and you could expect great things from the John who has yet to be.

"But you're right, it's none of my business and I was being kind of a dweeb about it." Parker swings his hand out low, offering a shake. "Sorry. I don't always know when to let up."

You take Parker's hand and accept the apology. "What if I told you I could fly? Like Superman. Nyoom."

Parker only rolls his eyes, puffing his cheeks out to exhale. "I'd think you were making fun of me."

"Aw," you drop Parker's hand, honestly a bit wounded. "You wouldn't be impressed? Not even a little?"

Parker is nodding, hands up in surrender, walking backward toward the exit hall. "I'll believe it when I see it."

You scoff, kicking into a lope to keep up. "You know, I can turn invisible too."

Parker only shakes his head.

Your grin widens. "But I can only do it if n-"

"If nobody's watching," Rogers finishes from behind you, Wanda and Natalie occupied with a punching bag between them. "Just a heads up, Dave, you should stay in the company of an Alpha, as escort. The lower levels connect to an outside subway line, and share medical and research facilities with SHIELD staff. While nobody else has clearance into our living quarters, the largess of the facilities remain public." He nods ahead down the hall, where a group of three in USAF exercise sweats are deboarding an elevator.

Parker stiffens beside you in confusion, perhaps because _he_ is technically an Alpha, and you pat between his shoulderblades to console him for the slight. "Aye-aye, Cap'n."

Rogers smiles flat, lips thinned. "Not that kind of captain."

You finger-gun right back at him. "Not that kind of Megan."

Rogers only turns his chin to the side. "Fair. But if Natalie can do this for me, then so can you."

Which was about as close to a ranking as you were going to get. Natalie was the example Meg, okay. Good. Fine.

Cool.

"Yeah, nnnot that kind of Meg, either," you insist, a little concerned now if Rogers was flexing some boss just to flex some boss. "Did we forget the godhood thing already, or is there something immortal loose in the warrens that you're not telling me about."

"Nope. Just for my peace of mind."

Right, because you weren't supposed to be another problem for Rogers to worry about, you were here to be good for him, here to settle his ass down, give Stark some leverage in the Pack, make good on Brodie's trust in you. "Yeah, but," you can't help it, you honestly just can't. goddamn. help it. "I'm not responsible for your anxiety, hoss. That's between you and your shrink."

Parker turns forward to pick up the pace, and as the gym visitors pass you are very swiftly alone in a hallway with Captain Rogers, who has stilled to let Parker take the first elevator ahead of you. You could have joined Pete, could have flashed out of there, but Brodie didn't raise no chicken.

"I'm responsible," Rogers starts quietly, stood in your peripheral but not yet advanced into your personal space. "For every life in this building that _you_ could endanger."

Your eyes widen, and you turn to face Rogers, side exposed so as not to come off like a challenger. "I don't kill people."

There's a cinch of regret in Rogers' true blue eyes. "I can't know if that's true."

You blanch.

"Not even accidentally, like Max." Rogers infringes on your space, but the tilt of his head is apologetic. "I'm not condescending against your ability to protect yourself. I'm trying to respect the power you can wield, all right?"

You want to laugh. You trap a belch in your mouth and turn to exhale, tapping your chest to settle the war of emotions within, or the war of a bout of after-chili tumbling. "I'm gonna go ahead and capitulate, for Tony's sake," you admit, turning on heel to walk backwards into the elevator, holding your breath because you're about to be stuffed into an enclosed space with one seriously attractive Not-That-Type-of-Captain. "Because he's hurt, and I don't want to stress him out. I think you can handle the truth, though. You're uh," you flick the air near Rogers' shoulder as he joins you. "Sturdy."

"And what is the truth, then." And sure Rogers is big but when it's just the two of you in that enclosed cabin he's _big,_ like he takes up more space than his actual physical self, unhindered by the company of his Pack, perfectly cordial but dangerous, too, somehow.

"That I am going to, uh," you honestly forgot what you were going to say. "See, the only -" wait, no, something about how Brodie raised you? Challenging, or self improvement, or independence or something. "Um." The elevator reaches its destination floor, but your stomach is still dropping.

Rogers lifts his hooded eyes, and there's a knowing in there that you're irritated to recognize. "I can handle it, remember, I'm _sturdy."_

"And kind of a bitch," you snipe, and your stomach dips somewhere around your knees, which lock in place, because jesus christ, what are you, seven years old and slugging Rogers on the playground because you like him?

Rogers blinks like he _has_ been slapped, but his face twitches like he's trying not to smile. "Weirdly," he starts, arms crossed over his chest as he tucks a lean back against the hand rail keeping you upright. "You're not the first to call me that." He bends forward to thumb another elevator button, and digs his phone out of his pocket as the elevator doors reclose, the cabin dropping. "And a molly-legged punk, before that."

You accept the phone, a gallery of candid long-distance cityscape shots open to display a greasy long-haired brunette in several states of rubble-dusted or bloodied, strapped in leather field armor and armed with mostly rifles. "What am I looking at, here." The guy (?) is masked, features obscured by a black smudge, bundled in several hoodies and jackets when he's not in the armors.

"The reason I need you to stay in sight. You can handle the truth, too, and I should have been honest from the start. This is Sergeant Barnes, a very old friend who's gone through some fairly horrific brainwashing."

"And he's... here?"

"No, but we're trying to bring him in alive to reverse the damage done to his brain, uncover information on the people who ran the program he and others have fallen victim to. Our home defenses aren't ironclad, and he might be trying to kill me. Or he might not. It varies."

"Kill _you?_ Some insane dirty leather-hottie is trying to _kill you?"_

Rogers frowns. "He's not dirty, that's tactical kohl. But yes." The elevator bobs to its destination, doors easing open, and Rogers thumbs the buttons again. "So we're clear? You'll stick within sight of one of the crew?"

"Compromise," you wheedle as you hand back the phone, heel tamping down. "If I see scaremeister Charlie, then I'll let someone know, and I'll flash outta there. Here. Wherever."

"I would agree to that, except Sergeant Barnes is a highly trained field operative who specializes in _not_ being seen." Rogers tilts his head, an afterthought, "And he's an Alpha."

"Oh." You wait out the elevator's ascent, and suffer the silence of Rogers' expectation until the doors open again. "Hey, if you need any help with your crazy friend," you surmise, arms open as you shuffle out into the cool air of an empty hall. "Me and about three dozen of my closest other-me can brush up on some non-lethal suppression tactics."

"Dave," Rogers says, and pins the back of your tsinela with the toe of his boot.

You stumble forward, throw a dirty look over your shoulder. "Steeb."

"If all the lights in this building failed, FRIDAY taken offline," He relents your shoe, stepping close with the sort of deft grace you don't assume of normal people that take up that much space. "The security systems disarmed," He lowers his voice, eyes soft despite the scenario he's trying to pitch. "And an assassin dropped down from the ceiling and told you to, oh I don't know,"

Your head is swimming, you can't take your eyes off Rogers' slightly sad mouth and you don't even know what floor you just came out on but you hope it's not a busy hallway because you've been wet since the elevator and walking has only broadcast the fact.

Rogers lands on the fictional scenario's fictional assassin's fictional command, "Freeze," the words brush warm against your ear and neck, "and get on your knees?"

You swallow, ears ringing, and manage not to totter nose-first into what you imagine would be remarkably firm dude-cleavage. Cleavitude.

Rogers, "You think you'd be able to just jump away from that?"

"Away from what?" you slur, your face so hot your eyes are tearing up a little from the burn.

"Exactly," Rogers concludes, bummed, but why is he bummed? What did you do, what's bumming him out?

You tutt and bump your nose into Steve's cheek, and his skin is a cool soothe that you press into until you're chest to chest, and christ he _is_ firm, and he smells so good -

"You wouldn't be able to summon three-dozen other 'you', if an Alpha was telling you otherwise." Rogers braces you by the elbows, pulls himself away.

"Mnyeah, well," you huff, woozy. "I actually literally grew up with a dude who actually, literally," you grip the crooks of Steve's elbows same as, for emphasis, "Dropped out of our ceiling crawlspace in the dark, randomly, all the time."

Rogers' chest rises and falls and he's starting to smell like disappointment now, too, which ties your insides into tangles, because you're doing something wrong and you don't even know what it is. His grasp moves from your elbows to your waist, but he's pushing away to put distance between you, and that stabs down you like cold rejection even though you aren't asking anything to be rejected by, you're just trying to -

"And what happened when he did that, randomly, all the time?" Rogers presses gently, "Did you fight him?"

"I used to," you recall, gone a bit breathless. Brodie had stopped the ambushes halfway through your fourteenth year, so you honestly don't know what you'd have been able to do. "But it's not like I'll stay dead, if your friend gets the drop."

Rogers' displeasure sharpens in the air. "Sure, Dave. But there are worse things that could happen, worse ends an enemy element could wield you towards."

You doubt that a trained assassin storming the joint would take the time to get a knot in, but don't want to argue any more, well fatigued against defiance, chest throbbing critically as Rogers steps away, summons the elevator back. But just like that, it's over; your head clears, the tension in your chest eases. You're so wet you're a little scared to move, but you've got your faculties recovered. "What the fuck was that," you croak at Steve's broad back.

"One of the worser things that could happen," Steve answers blithely. "You've never been in Thrall, before?" His eyes are narrowed in disbelief, but he returns to your elbow to guide you back onto the elevator with a care you don't expect, warm hand on your sore lower back.

You take a breath, shaky, off-kilter. "I guess I damn fucking well never have been, no."

"But you had an Alpha," Rogers argues gently. "It's an autonomous reaction, Dave, you would have fallen in Thrall a few times in your seasons at least."

Right. Imaginary Alpha who Brodie savaged, and an un-referenced string of casual hookups to follow, also imaginary. You close your mouth, lost adrift in your confusion. "My Alpha never had that affect on me, I guess," which was damn near true - Brodie only corrected your backtalk with ass-kickings and insults, never with a flood of hormonal flags or any sort of, what, _biological imposition._ Either he didn't know how, because autosomal biology can't be mimicked, or to put you in thrall was against his scruples, both equally possible.

"That sounds nice," Rogers says, and you've never heard that phrase used sincerely before, but Rogers is anything if not painfully sincere. "But I was trying to prove a point. Whatever independent lifestyle habits you've gotten used to no longer pass muster, because you aren't independent anymore. You _are_ vulnerable to elements of manipulation, and that _is_ a risk we've taken on, against ourselves, to have you here."

You swallow, properly cowed.

The elevator closes, you and Rogers pale under the blued overheads.

"Then why _am_ I here," you insist quietly, because you're not supposed to know, not about Rogers and not why Brodie chose this team, this position to fork you over to. Did he know that the reception would be shallow, the Pack meandering, nearly every member detached or misanthropic or just hesitant, that they'd all be easy to leave again, easy to get back home from? That nobody would grab you up, check your health, stake a claim?

"Besides the job from which you've already retired?" To his credit, Rogers doesn't lie, and with a silent sigh admits, "You are the latest candidate in a long line of Anthony's attempts to marry me off." He's facing the door, parade-rest, hands clasped behind his back, and his fingers tap against the heels of his palms.

If you were better at this, you'd speak up, tease, challenge, anything. You're mute, but maybe that's okay. Maybe you would have been mute, hearing that for the first time. And maybe Rogers has let the cat out of the bag, on account of no longer needing a bagged cat. Maybe this was as good as a rejection, a tearing down of the green curtain, a surrender to defeat.

The elevator opens to a small crowd of office workers with laminated access badges, to whom you forfeit the cabin, following Rogers in a circuit through populated halls, two steps behind to the left of him like a good southern Meg. Your journey pauses at a wide set of swinging double-doors, past which you can smell the unmistakable plastic of sterile medical offices.

There's a backlit map beside these doors illustrating a network of subway tunnels that run to a handful of nameless destinations, marked in numbers. You meet Rogers' glance back with your unwavering stare, expression still softened by surprise, wearing your Megface to cover the concentrated effort to snap-memorize the map.

Rogers' mouth tugs to the side, and he pushes through a door to hold it open for you. "Please don't do that."

You drop the mask with a shrug and proceed into the med bay, fidgeting your hospital bracelet off with a stretching twist. "Most people prefer some facial emoting to judge by."

"I'm not most people, and I prefer honesty."

"Hn," you grunt, wounded, and stuff your bracelet in your back pocket. "Okay then. I'm not at all surprised we're being set up. You're an Alpha, I'm an Omega; you crack skulls, my skull can't be cracked - at least not permanently; I'm a slut and you're a -" you hold your hand out, palm up, trying to weigh the comparison.

"If you say 'boyscout'-"

"Nun," you finish, shaking your head in question. "What are we doing here, are you getting your shots? Donating blood?"

"Just a promised checkup, sorry, I'll be done in ten." Rogers accepts a clipboard from a desk clerk and you join him in the squeaky plastic waitingroom seats. "Once a medical circus monkey, always a medical circus monkey," he sighs, flipping through the paperwork.

You hang your elbows over the back of your chair, slouching to try and relieve the discomfort of the unbred damp between your legs. Out in the world there were Omegas sitting similarly in public, in restaurants or movie theaters or shopping malls, with their Alphas beside all stuffed up with pride because a noticeably wet Meg was only proof of their good health, and their attraction to their partners. "Or you could just tell them all to fuck off. It's your body."

Rogers grunts over the clipboard, pen hovering down the tick-boxes. "It's not, actually. This body is the property of the United States Armed Services, and they need regular assurances that it's outperforming standard."

Your thumbs tuck down each of your knuckles, cracking them in swift practice. "Well, that's balls."

Rogers shrugs. "Routine check-ins are a fair price to pay, considering what they did for me."

You dip your head forward. "Captain America and the Super Soldier Serum," you recite. "I always thought that was a conspiracy, you know, like some bullshit madeup story to really stick it to the UberMensch mythos." You snap your fingers, jazz-points, "Like you were a garden-variety Mutant but we had to say suck it, nazi scientists, America did the thing you were trying to do and we did it better and we did it first."

Rogers' chest jerks with a silent scoff. "Not too far off from the truth of their intent, but it wasn't any kind of hoax. And anyways," he stands with a creak of relieved plastic, taps you on the head with the clipboard. "So long as we're debunking rumors. I'm not a nun."

The clipboard falls away from your view and you stare Rogers down with a sincerity that anchors his attention. "I'm not a slut."

Rogers' eyebrows ease upward, but his stare drifts down, then back up, winches in a cool skepticism that he doesn't voice. "M'ohkay." He turns to hand in the paperwork.

You tsk, tuck your ankle across your knee and throw a glare down the med bay's brightly tiled corridor. If he's teasing you, that's probably a good sign, right?

The clock over the reception desk ticks down each thought that haunts you, each hint and fear that you've failed to captivate your assigned beau, have actively worked against the match, in fact, out of sheer stubborn reticence to Bro's cryptic bullshit. An aide calls Rogers' name and, since you're not to be left unescorted, you stand on cold feet to follow him further into the bay, shoulders empty for the sword you need slung over them.

This isn't a DJ gig, this isn't some masked spectacle for which you can get hype, not a club or a stadium venue open; your crew isn't waiting in the wings with bottled water and merch to autograph and there's no cow-eyed Beta bodyguard to get you out of the back door and back to the hotel. You aren't settling down in a radio studio to croon into an interview, coy about the Strider brand but a champion for the Turntech team; not rubbing any elbows with any other middling-industry artists, schmoozing it up with today's latest buzzwords or yesteryear's production complaints.

All those people in your public life, they feel like dolls now, like props, placeholders in a fabrication of normalcy. These warrens, their offices and gadgetry, the grim professionalism of the people therein, everything here is so real it's almost raw under your tongue. Rogers isn't some mythical hero stood up on a pedestal out of reach, he's a very real human body sat on an exam chair in a defeated slouch, given to snark in the face of some unknown exhaustion, apologetic in the lines of his shoulders.

You sit similarly beside Steve on the crinkle of the long chair's paper cover, thighs touching because why not, slouched forward to accuse the bare exam room walls of your boredom. Steve's warm and he smells great and it's the privilege of your station to be able to smarm all up on that no questions asked, Pass Go to collect 200 dignities.

"You can," Rogers interrupts your brooding, clears his throat and jerks his chin at the door. "If you were ever on them, before, we offer those here, too. Stabilizers, or suppressants or whatever they're called now."

Since you're not a slut, hormone shots would have been your next best bet against unanswered Heats. You hum a consideration, feet wagging listlessly. "Ye-hp," you drawl, resigned, angry at Bro's dumb stupid idiot 'mission', his cheap attempt to scrape you off onto someone else, and Rogers such a fucking gem, too, like what did he ever do to deserve a batshit wierdo Striderbride to menace his good sense. "S'pose I better."

And that's it, that's as good as a 'thanks but no thanks' for the opportunity to get some knot. You can pull an Egbert and just focus on your job for a while, ignore all the interpersonal flotsam drifting in on the post-hurricane tide.

Steve flags of relief, which doesn't feel great for your ego, but what the hell else were you expecting. You're not simpatico; you're barely civil with each other and you both verbally resent the roles that your friends and family have a habit of making assumption on. You don't have a choice but to at least _try_ to marry Steve, eventually, since that's the job Stark has you in on, and Steve isn't going to turn you down in any formal sense, on his own volition, because you're literally his responsibility just by being where you are, who you are and what you are. You lean a little firmer into Steve's side, because this is scary, you are actually properly scared of the limits realized of your station, and Steve leans back because he's a good person, the sort of 'good' derived from some flavormix between lawful-beautiful and ABSOLUTE GODDAMN MUPPET.


	8. I : VIII

Pale blue strips of inset floor lights wash the commons in an eerie faux moonlight, dialed down to a dull diffusion cast off the high white walls to mimic the nightfall outside the complex, and from the kitchen a small set of under-cupboard lights cast a warmer slant toward the elevator foyer. The bower is a wide square sunk into the floor of the commons proper, lined in pillowed steps, the furthest shallow wall of which is shelved with books and lamps and, because Tony could be nothing if not Extra, a mini-bar. Screens from phones and laptops keep the bower otherwise aglow, and a flat screen had been propped on a low kotatsu table to play a quiet news feed, world events and market predictions, until someone covertly changes the channel to latenight pulp.

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, and you are NINETEEN YEARS OLD the night you join a Pack. Most people are born to Packs, and might reform or join another later on in the line of their schooling or careers; but it was only ever you and Brodie your whole life and the reactions you get from saying so make it feel like buggering you wasn't the worst thing Bro could have been doing. Isolation was as good as a death wish at worst, flirting with a feral break at best, and isolation of an Omega was damn nigh unthinkable.

Because what would even be the point of hoarding a 'Meg to no viable coupling, except to inflict a cruel uselessness against them? Even if they never intended to have any sort sexual relationship with anyone during the whole run of their life, even if they used blockers and passed just fine, why stunt a person like that, why close them off in suffering? Objectively, you know why - or rather, you'd never been given a 'why not'. You and Bro had chilled alone together in his pad at no immediately obvious effect; you had friends, you had a career, you even (sort of, technically) had an Alpha. This isn't something you can gracefully explain away, though, so you claim on the pressing urgency of the hellportal problem at the time and are, for once, grateful for Brodie's pack of lies on your social history.

Parker looks a little sick at your confession, but you can't answer his poorly controlled waft of concern with anything better than a low chuckle. No wonder Bro wanted you to come off like some damaged thing robbed of your scruples - anything else would have drawn disbelief, and suspicion against your story. And fuck, maybe you _were_ feral - maybe Bro's mindfulness training was just anathema to that, a temporary remedy for the state of mind you'd have grown into, unawares.

The little blue Matroyshka, of course, already knows this, but her sisters in red sing loudest.

The life you lived was the only life you knew - and that life was never going to be television-perfect; and that life was always going to be a crash-course in impulse control; either as philosophical discipline, or the conditioning you'd gone through to normalize the extreme, let you fight for the fate of the Earth on a Thursday and be sound asleep by Friday morning.

Banner drags a pile of Banner-scented bedding in from the west hall living quarters, with which Natalie nests down a corner of the bower's pillowed stairs. You settle to a perch in the safe zone between null Meg and dadbod Beta, Bruce reclined with a paperback and a set of bifocals balanced on his nose, indifferent in a way that feels like a favor (which you will goddamn take, overwrought on all the performing you've so far kept up).

Natalie pushes her wrists up behind your ears and digs her fingers through your hair and that helps, a little, but you still feel like you're missing something - missing some _one,_ someone tall and smoky and cragged by violence, someone supercool and hella genius, broad shoulders and a trim waist. "We can find a spot for John at SHIELD, if he's already qualified for the FBI," Natalie mumbles, answering the distress in your apple. "He could live here, with you; work in the offices below."

Anticipation lances up your chest, stalls your breath, because you weren't thinking about John but - "That would be cool," you husk, picturesque chill. "It would have to fly with his dad, first. John's Skaian, like me 'n Bro, so he's kinda perma-signed to the Feds for a few years yet."

Bruce looks over from his book. "Can John do what you can do?"

"Oh, uh," you aren't sure what bears revealing, but it's not like the Avengers would lack for security clearance. "No. We're not sure. He does a windy thing." You shape the air, trying to illustrate. "Whoosh."

"Can he fly, like Superman?" Parker teases from the adjoining corner of the shallow stairs, deferentially distant but closer every time you look.

"You know, he _can_ actually," you say, sitting forward to put your wrists on your knees. "But they don't let him fight crime or anything. Mostly they just put him in a big room with a lot of fans and cameras, test his strength. He works in the Pentagon's mail room, surprise-line-of-defense type gig." You shrug. "So I dunno how hard the FBI would fight you to keep him on. They might have to start going on their own coffee runs; could be too steep a loss."

Parker smiles low and subtle the way you've seen Rogers smile, knowingly, wry. "How old is he?"

"Um," you squint, pull your shades off, CAPTCHA them. "My age. We all fell from the sky the same year, me an' him, and Rose and Jade."

Parker shifts, clasps his wrist across the bridge of his knees. "Well, how old are you?"

"Old as balls," you assure, frown settling between your eyebrows. "Don't let the corpus fool you, kid, I'm an everlasting elderMeg, as wrinkly in my soul as -"

"Dave," Bruce warns gently over his e-reader, thumbing the next page up. "Nineteen, Pete."

"Oh, come on," you drawl, fidgeting your CAPTCHA to browse for your vape, out of habit. The 'logue had been emptied prior to forfeit as Dowry, and all the rest of your shit that wasn't in your duffel was still in Houston to haunt your Alpha into changing his mind. "I am _at least_ thirty. In my brains. I do my own laundry."

Natalie hums. "If Anthony gets to be twelve, I think we can let Dave be thirty."

"Hey," Tony calls from the kitchen, hands planted flat over the island counter, reading holographs from a thin glass clipboard. "I don't know what was said, but I heard my name."

"You've been demoted to younger than Parker," you helpfully inform, elbows on knees. "I've been reduced to something as mortal as a time scale. All sorts of crimes going down over here."

"Nobody asked Nat her age, did they?" A NEW VOICE arrives somewhere behind you, and if you weren't used to silent ninja drop-ins you might have startled. Your pulse is up, though, as HAWKEYE, still in the dark leathers of his occupation, shuffles into your peripheral to accept a cup of coffee from Rogers, who has stood to greet him with one of those trademark Alpha Intros, all spine-cracking and back-clapping. "What did I tell you people, about asking Natasya her a--"

Hawkeye stalls out when he spots you, and his mouth firms from its teasing grin, glancing at Rogers, who crosses his arms to watch. A silent conference passes between them and Hawkeye takes a stool beside Tony, instead of drifting further into the Den.

"Somewhere in my eighties," Natalie demures, tapping your elbow to reassure you. "Bring us a cup of that, would you Barton?"

"But you're not joking," you guess, feigning a relaxation you don't feel. Clint Barton smells like Alpha, and it's just not goddamn feasible that there's another one thrown into this high-Alpha mix, even though distantly you _knew_ the Avengers were an A-Team of rugged individualism brought together under no cooperation but the demands of Director Fury. 'Who are my options', you had asked, and Tony had been at an honest loss to answer you, because you could probably take your goddamn pick.

"I am not joking," Natalie agrees about the same time you conclude you are now living in a _Dating Sim._ A Sim that was wasted on you, if you were being honest, and you desperately want to share the irony with Brodie, who is not here to smirk at you.

"And you look _fantastic,"_ Barton assures from his post at the coffee station. 

Rogers departs the kitchen to precede Barton's approach, and he looks everywhere but at you as he toes out of his canvas sneakers to step down into the square of the bower. Parker scoots up a few steps again, Bruce affords a cool refusal to budge and Natalie just lets herself remain in the way, plastered to Steve's side as Steve sits to the stair directly behind you, his long legs bracketing your hips, one knee bent and foot planted on the bottom stair with the other stretching out straight.

The bulk of Steve is warm at your back and his voice is low and close over your shoulder, a stair taller. "Dave Strider, this is Clint Barton. Field name Hawkeye."

You expect another biological betrayal that doesn't happen - you're a little edgy, maybe, because of the sudden caution that's been thrown up in the room, but you aren't puddling. 

Barton holds a coffee out, instead of bending down to sample you. "And what is Dave's field name."

You glance from the white mug in colorfully bandaged fingers, then to Tony, whose hooded study of the scene lightens when your eyes meet. "You got kids," you say, instead of answering Barton's question.

"How could you tell." Barton lets Rogers take the coffee, sets the other in Natalie's waiting grasp.

Your voice doesn't waver, doesn't clip from its PI monotone. "Waterproof bandaids, with the cartoons on them. Either you have kids or you're enough of a Disney nerd to forfeit the extra 79 cents on a pack of those - because _I know_ those ain't first aid standard, as the gubb'ment would never pay extra for anything it didn't have to."

"Hmp," Barton grunts, impressed. 

"Dave doesn't have a field name," Rogers answers over your head, coffee on his breath. "He's retiring."

You narrow your eyes over your shoulder, grin open just a little for the tease. "I worked with Houston, on the Strider team," you hedge, scratching under your sleeve. "Never saw the point in making up an alias. We're kind of hard to mistake."

Barton holds up a finger, getting comfortable between Parker and Natalie, agile and compact in his crouch. "Not-Asgardian-Houston? New guy, Houston? Talks Texan, like you?"

"What," you press, a little louder than the intimate lighting of the bower would suggest. "Broderick Strider," you all but demand, leaning forward to better study Clint Barton past Natalie's shared tension. He's stout, but coiled; all the verve and vigor of an Alpha on the smaller side of his orientation, sharp-eyed like Anthony but laconic like Nat. You scoff at Barton's lack of denial, "That fucker -" left without telling you where or for how long, and it killed you, because you were all Brodie ever had to himself and you'd have never done him that dirty.

"Woah," Tony stands, approaching at an arc, not a straight line, not a threat. "Brodie didn't tell you he was coming in with SHIELD?"

The sharp sting of betrayal spikes just behind your breastbone. "Brodie didn't tell me _shit,_ he just - he only -" he only told you once, way back before you ever set foot underground, that he was never going to leave you. That if he ever didn't come back, there was a phone number on the toaster you were supposed to call, written in dayglo pink liquid chalk; you were to call that number after the third day of radio silence because he'd have to be dead to stay away for as long. Even after you melted an entire RHCP discography in that toaster it had sat charred and dented in its venerated spot between the microwave and the breadbox, gummy pink phone number lacquered on by years of aerosolized cooking grease.

The rising tension in the back of your throat cuts off at the first brush of the side of Steve's palm down your shoulder. His hand cups your bicep, his rough thumb slips under your sleeve where the hypodermic puncture was itching in its heal. You'd gotten the injection of suppressant down in medical, pre-approved by Mr. Stark himself, because he didn't want to obligate you into the match, either; and it was there that Steve chose to touch, the only wound he could actually address, a three-note Alpha stability chipping away at your unrest.

"Okay," Tony lightly cuffs the back of Parker's ear, shooing him further down the bower steps to make room. "Well now you know." He does the rich-guy-in-expensive-pants hike just above his knees before sitting with a groan.

To summarize: Brodie left after an ironic proposal to start a House with you (which you had made the mistake of taking seriously), in an over-dramatized protest of your refusal to grow the fuck up and leave; kicked your custody over to answer an Auction bid made by Tony Stark (?), to the goal of fronting a picture-perfect public-image with Mr. America himself. The situation was delicately balanced by a who's-on-first joke regarding your awareness of your impending bridehood, because the Pack was not Sure About You, least of all your would-be suitor, who would put the happiness (and safety) of his Team first. Contrary to Tony Stark's warning that he'd rather not entrap Rogers into a loveless obligation, YOU are already entrapped to Rogers, yourself, by the end goal to earn Brodie's approval, if not his return.

A return for whose immediacy has redoubled, now you know that Brodie has given himself over to a paranormal organization not unlike the one that had captured his alien baby-ass in the first place. SHIELD was nothing like the Avengers - had been right up there with SCP and the rogues of Area 51, a grossly unregulated militarization of indentured or prosecuted meta-humans, an organization that Brodie openly goddamn _disparaged._ You immediately suspect shenanigans, of course, and can't put a lid on your intense alarm - the Auction thing, the Mr. America mission, okay those made sense, sort of; but Brodie falling in line like bim-bam-bat-out-of-hell? Scary.

Scary like Bro didn't just leave to break up with you, to get you 'evolved' past the loyal weapon he'd made of you. Scary like, like Bro _had to be_ a total bastard. Scary like this all really is some pre-meditation toward some larger, bottomless goal that is already swallowing you up. Steve's caress turns into a pet, because you're a 'Meg and 'Megs are always up for grabs - especially Megs in distress.

You're not a day into mission and Steve had not spilled the beans so much as flung the beans out of the window, can and can opener and all, when he let you know forthright that you were here for an mawwiage, which nixed that whole anonymous courtship he initially asked Stark to enable. To you, that was as good as a rejection, so, you had opted for the least embarrassing safeguard against biological fuckery, completely unprepared and unwilling to fuck a _fucking stranger_ to no promised reward. Whether or not Steve was letting you off the hook by freeing that cat from its bag re: teh mawwiage, you had taken the hormone shot - an act of defiance, because dear sweet Hilde Baumgartner is a stong, independent Meg who runs around stabbing herself with swords and needles when she can't immediately get her way, fuck, _fuck._ Shit.

Because now, learning that Brodie has been _proper_ taken from you, taken by some shitty paranormal cloak-and-daggers organisation, that maybe he even sold you off to safeguard you from the same fate because who knows what the fuck Cutter had planned for Brodie's contract conclusion; _now_ you maybe need to play to Brodie's specifications, and trust him a little better on with whom the Striders are going to need to form allegiance. Steve - who probably doesn't want to marry you, mind - is playing comfort and protection at your back like, what, like Tony warned you about? For the sake of duty, he said, that Rogers would bond with you by dint of his scruples if nothing else, because Rogers was the (unofficial) Head of House and 'Megs were always up for grabs and if nobody good got you under hand then somebody bad might and Rogers didn't want your timeline murderclones used against his team (or, you know, the Earth).

Still made you a little sick, though, the old inevitability that Brodie had been pressured into giving you up, somehow - and that the only reason Rogers was even behind you right now was because he's a responsible dude with a kind heart. You ~~never~~ _constantly_ fooled yourself into thinking Brodie was genuinely attracted to you, especially these last few years when he had been answering your feral compulsion to get dicked. Unwittingly. Or maybe totally wittingly, who knows, the dude was never surprised by anything and you wouldn't put it past him to see you FERAL and expect you to just fucking WALK IT OFF.

But you can't fool yourself here, with Steve. There were plenty of other avenues BRO could have taken to train you up and keep you under control, up to and including the chemical injection wizardry the labcoats were always on about. You could better imagine that Bro chose good ol' fashioned buggery because it was good for him, too. Avoided chemical dependency and mental complicity. Answered a specifically Striderian loneliness. Fulfilled a need. 

You crab a wordless groan, despite Steve's other hand chuffing up your other arm. To Barton, "What goddamn _division?"_

"Uhh," Barton stalls, asks Tony with a glance.

Tony shakes his head no. "Was going into blackout, last he told me. So I'm going to guess he's in communications. Understandably."

The scream builds silently behind your throat, adam's apple lodged against your wind pipe, and your eyes sting with the shiver of your fear, which puts a doughy salt in the air. 'Blackout', sure. Or he was already dead, because as it turns out, they *do* actually kill circus masters who lay hands on the baby elephant, so long as that elephant can be safely commanded by anyone else. The world was a lot bigger than it used to be; squirrely geniuses were a dime a dozen, interchangeable one from the next. Bro was always more problem than solution. You never did find out if he could resurrect. "Do these windows open," you croak, swiping your cheeks. "I need a smoke."

Parker is watching you like a cat might watch the construction of a tuna sandwich, wary, curious and hungry all in one. Tony takes a breath to answer, but Barton beats him to the punch, thumbing open a small buttoned pocket near his belt line, to offer a blister packet of nicotine gum.

You reach over Steve's knee to accept with a nod. "Let me rephrase. Do these windows open? I need to dash my brains against the side of the building." Because you'd been playing Hilde Baumgartner this whole goddamn time, strong independent Meg who don't need no baby-maker, when you should have been playing D Strider, Houston's good southern Meg and inveterate fuckbunny here to get yourself a tall'blonde'n'patriotic in order to safeguard your brother's return to the fucking daylight.

Before, Bro was just being his usual unimaginably cruel alien-ass-alien self; and this was all some huge gross fakeout stunt he'd pulled in the name of your own good or whatthefuckever. Not like John would have ever joined the House you wanted to make with Brodie, and not like Brodie didn't goddamn well fucking know that. Before, you could act up and fuck around, sabotage the mission, whatever, nothing could keep Brodie out of your life but Brodie's own decision to do that, the shit-heel. But now, now that you know about SHIELD's involvement, you're less inclined to rebel, a little more incentivized to perform to mission standard.

You really might not actually get to see Brodie until you're locked in with a different Alpha. The spooks could have actually drawn the conclusion that, okay, so Bro Strider was a whole entire handful of wierdo murderfuck on his own, and no heaping helping of antihero the size of awla that should also have an immortal timeclone army at his beck and call, too. They mighta, uh. Caught on. To that. And this decision made, whether they knew about the incest or not - if you'd had any kind of normal relationship then Bro's suppressive custody wouldn't have held up in the face of an actual romance. If you'd gotten off your ass to find an Alpha, or if some other shadowy organisation had sent up an undercover suitor, you might still be in this exact situation, because SHIELD had fronted the Avengers, and it was SHIELD that owned Brodie now, too.

Steve's grip firms, a damp in his wrists scenting apple in with your apple, a bizarre melody. Brodie said he'd never leave you, not on his own merits, not unless you needed the space to get your life on its own tracks. He said he might die, some day, or they'd kill him, or you would (which you never understood), but that he wasn't going to _go_ anywhere, even if he had elsewhere to be. 

Barton shrugs with his hands as you pop a square of off-color gum from its plastic blister. 

Brodie would always be in that shitty apartment, he promised. You had only shown up to New York expecting Bro to return home; that he just wanted his space back.

The gum is bitter and minty and undoubtedly caffeinated, and does nothing to improve your nerves. Brodie lied to you, early and often, but they were never retro-active lies, nothing long-game or important. He was as dedicated to telling horrible truths as he was to telling nonsensical lies, the whimsy of his fictions and ironies sold to no real damage between you two. If he'd been scalped by SHIELD, on like a voluntary enrollment type gig, he would have told you.

"Does nicotine affect you?" Doctor Banner prompts softly from the other side of Rogers, flat reader dropped to the slouch of his chest and arms crossed in contemplation.

"Yesh," you slur around the defensive watering of your mouth, cheek pulling back to try and more comfortably chew, lost to introspection. Brodie said he'd never leave you. "Unless it's, like," you wave, still perched forward in Steve's loose embrace. Brodie left you. "Homeopathic, or. Whatsit." Brodie left you under mysterious circumstances, walking out for milk. 

"Psychosomatic," Banner finishes, studying you over the top of his bifocals while Barton, Nat and Tony discuss the mysterious yet anticipated Sam, and the state of Barton's Wife And Kids, to which you half listen.

"Yeah, that." Your lack of locution is familiar to Steve's company, to the dampener of his hormonal signature, and you hitch a sigh as if after a good long sob, chin tilting to face Banner. "Hand mouth fixation, I suspect. But I'd get the withdrawal symptoms without knowing that's what they were, so, I guess the chemical actually got to me."

You hear the tine of the bifocals click before you notice Banner's drawn them off his face. "What would you say to a comprehensive physical?"

Your mouth pulls back. "I'd say you oughta buy a Megan dinner, first."

Parker sputters on the Starbucks cocoa that Pepper had arrived to serve, fingers tense in the effort not to squash the insulated cardboard. You gamely ignore this, in no mood to join Tony in his light ribbing as he hands a handkerchief over.

"Skaian medical information is copyright," Tony reminds archly, accepting the cocoa-sticky handkerchief back from Parker with a silent and puzzled annoyance. "You'd need written permission from the copyright, uh, holder -" Tony drops the kerchief back over Parker's arm, scowling playfully. "Jesus, Pete, just keep it." And Tony could tell them about Hilde Baumgartner, share the info, suggest a work-around to the NDA since Brodie couldn't be contacted to ask permission by. Stark could bend the rule on this contract agreement, just a little; out Hilde, out you. Tony could dig your info up with a few carefully placed suggestions back at the State office, but weirdly, he does not.

Tony does not do any of this, because Tony respects personal autonomy above all else, and because you are the favor Tony is performing for Brodie, who has long ago earned Tony Stark's friendship. This inaction, of course, is a mistake.

"The specifics can be found in Dave's contract," Pepper follows up gently, handing you a cocoa, too, which you accept with all the trepidation of being invited to the kids' table. "The NDA dictates that the permission lies with the Skaian National Bureau, if there's no answering custodian."

Which you did not know. "Do we have anything stronger than this?" You ask, only half serious, and turn over your shoulder. "What goes in cocoa. Whiskey?" Hell, you didn't even know Skaians had a bureau, but it wasn't like your generation was the first to fall to Earth, nor even Bro's generation before you.

Steve blinks, eyebrows arched in question. He drops his hands to the top of his knees, resigned that he cannot do what a stiff whiskey could.

"Yes!" Tony stage-whispers, clapping his hands before jolting to a stand with a speed you wouldn't have assumed him capable. "Rum. Sugar-based for a sugary drink, won't hang you over. We also have cocoa liqueur, for the discerning palette."

Pepper hums a quiet delight. "I'll have that," she accepts Tony's vacated spot and frisbees the empty cardboard drink carrier up to Tony's waiting catch. "FRIDAY, can you ask Vision to bring up the Bellame reserve?"

"Of course, Miss Potts," FRIDAY intones from the overhead, volume as dimmed as the lights.

"Hey FRIDAY," you croak, in the attempt to recover some semblance of a good mood, so as to not completely offend the dude you were doubly determined to impress or engender right now. "What is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything."

FRIDAY answers, evenly, "42."

Steve scoffs over your shoulder, hand returned to cupping your arm. "I understood that reference."

You twist a bit in place, knees colliding with Steve's bent leg, to try and feign a little helplessness, Mission Get Brodie Back Safe returned to full swing. You squint, voice low like you're letting Steve see a hidden side of you, like you're offering up your anxieties to his capable hands or whatever, bluh. "Is it going to be okay, this many Alphas in the Den?" What with alcohol in the mix, and Bruce halfway into his post-dinner nap.

"Sam's a Beta," Steve assures, head inclined to keep your conference contained, but eyebrow slanted in doubt for your performance. "Do you think there could be a fight? Honest opinion."

You wince, caught between this less-than-honest front and your actual personal dignity. "Been fighting my whole life, Rogers, at this point I'd welcome the return to norm--" You dip your chin to glance back at Parker, put off your game by the youngest Alpha on the scene staring you down like you just rose out of the ocean in a clamshell. _"Buddy."_ Hard to pull off a convincing seduction with a kid throwing owl-eyed sabotage at you and your disaffection.

Pepper reaches over to stroke down Parker's neck Guardian-Ward style. "It's impolite to stare," she reminds, and Parker blinks at last, averts his eyes. To you, "Pete's not usually this quiet, Dave; I think you just have that affect on people."

"We talked at the gym," Parker gamely argues in a mutter, shrugging. 

Natalie knocks Parker's bare foot with her own. "You spending the night, Spider? Or is Stark going to fly you back?"

The conversations drift thus, small side-avenues of thought and question and scheduling, your small group mumbling, smatters of quiet laughter, volume upped in a lazy protest every now and again, and you are snagged along like a leaf in a river, spun to new conversational currents as they arrive. Barton has a family, whom Natalie knows by name, and there's a history there between them that flirts openly and fondly and insincerely. Parker has May, and two close friends, and Tony and Pepper - and maybe Happy, but nobody else. Barton would forever register more like an outlier to the Pack, visits infrequent, but you could safely assume Parker would join as soon as he was old enough to place.

Tony used to have friends, professional acquaintances really, a cadre of Yes-men and the rare bitter misanthrope genius semi-rival - a category into which Brodie had fallen, which was the point of that infodump. Now Tony had Pepper, and Pete, and a Pack (and alliterative timing, apparently). Tony also had General Rhodes, a college roomy who now manned War Machine in Iron Man's stead with the Armed Forces.

Wanda, who took up a spot opposite Banner with Vision sat stoic and contemplative beside, used to have a brother, too - who passed in the line of duty, details reserved. They, like Parker, had been orphaned young, and claimed no Pack or family until the Avengers, under whom they had been working at the time of Pietrov's death.

Vision, you come to find out, is less than a year in existence - and he drops his human facade to explain the yellow gem in the middle of his forehead and the rest of THE INFINITY STONES, which, okay, for all the weird shit you've lived steeped in (and originated from, let's be real), the concept of gemstones embodying the very building blocks of life and reality doesn't come off too improbable. You'd read up on as much, anyway, after Loki Laufeyson had terrorized New York - a debacle that had happened and resolved too quick to summon reinforcements. You didn't know one of those STONES had become a person, but then neither did the rest of the world - Vision assumed on as a mutant resurgence or spare Asgardian denizen or whatever.

Banner had his life's work in molecular biology, and a buttoned lip about about anything - any one - else, but he had been surprised how well he and Anthony actually got along, to Tony's wounded grunt.

Rogers doesn't offer his history, because his history is public record and the telling would be redundant. He does miss the Howling Commandos, was pretty sure they would have found each other post-theater, as most military veterans did after surviving their various wars, and laughs a little at how _that_ Pack would have been lousy with Alphas, too, loudmouths and jokers the lot of them.

And then there's you, parentless, custodied under a crazy same-something cryptid who ~~fucked your guts out as soon as you were biologically viable~~ honed you into a weapon the likes of which has routinely saved Earth from unannounced annihilation without so much as a radio report about it. And then there was Nat, eighty, visibly immortal, also a child soldier, 'custodied' under the Agent X program, honed into a weapon the likes of which has toppled entire countries and crippled entire economies (but now manages to save the world using those same resources against extra-terrestrial threat, a weirdly perfect Yin to your subterran Yang).

Parker can't look at either you or Natalie, expression crumpled and hands fidgety at his ankles, anger clear in his scent, over-protective Alphahood instinct escaping the control of his reason.

"My parents are alive and well," Pepper soothes, tapping Parker's elbow until he stands. "Much to Tony's dismay." She stands, too, hand firm on the back of Pete's neck, to usher him to the kitchen for some centering; Tony and Rogers watch the pair depart, twitchy in their mutual preparation to remand.

"Yoh," you husk Tony's way, unlidding your cocoa for Vision's offered pour of inky liqueur.

"Yo yourself and see how you like it," Tony says, chin jerking up to acknowledge the distraction you were offering. "What's the news, D, you want to sleep here tonight?"

"Um." You shift, careful not to jostle out of Steve's lap. "Where else would I go." You nod thanks to Vision, sip the malty cocoa, try not to cry. Literally, where would you go. Brodie wasn't in the apartment any more, blackout mission or coded imprisonment, even if you ever absconded back to Texas. You drink harder, feeling the burn.

Tony does not relent you your own room in the compound, as you had both hoped and feared, but, "You and Nat could keep Pepper company in our suite." To your wary tension, "I usually sleep in the workshop, champ, your virtue would be spared."

"Ehh," you eye Natalie, stomach warm with the first blush of inebriation. "I am bent, remember. Dunno if the girls would be safe."

"'Girls'," Pepper squawks from the kitchen, startling Parker from his sulk under her scenting. "Hah."

* * *

The bathroom to the commons is as opulent as Stark's, but instead of a shower big enough to sleep in there's a line of stalls and instead of a cabinet of towels there's a wall mirror.

You look like a ghoul, hollowed out from the week you'd been unable to eat to your usual excess, when you'd been too nauseated by grief. You aren't nauseated anymore, and there's a stain of color in your face that feels like a sunburn but stings all the way down to the bone.

Your mirror image flickers, and a time clone is perching on the sinktop with his sword resting on his shoulder, eyebrows up, aviators scuffed. You're so goddamn relieved to see a familiar face in private that you just collapse into his lap, arms tight around his bony waist.

"Woah dude, be cool," Clonedave urges, and he's one of the less sympathetic Daves but whatever, you'll take it.

"Ask the computer in the elevator to take you to Stark's suite. There's a fresh load of laundry in the utility closet to the right of the sittingroom, may or may not have a butlerbot as sentry." You peel your face from Clonedave's hip. "Get me a fresh set, would you? And a sweater."

Clonedave's lip curls, nostrils flaring. "Bro is gonna whoop your ass if you don't wash that dudefunk off, too. Might as well burn the clothes you've got on."

Your voice cracks. You let it. "Bro isn't a part of the equation anymore."

Something passes through Clonedave's expression, some alter-reality memory you never had to experience. "It's one of those worlds, is it," he sighs, and eases his hands through your hair.

Some Daves came from dead Brodies. "Worse," you croak, squeezing Clonedave tighter. "Somehow, it's worse." All Daves came from dead Daves - you'd never be a Clonedave, summoned from a doomed timeline - you were a God-Dave who would forever do the summoning. Sometimes you worry the Clonedaves were just something you made up in your own head, but they smell like different places, sound like different people, have different scars - and all their physical manifestations are proven real enough, every time.

"Worse like how," Clonedave prompts, slim hands cool and dry down the back of your neck, smoothing under the collar of your red shirt. His fingers pause over the semi-circle scar of your Bonding bite, and he tugs the collar up to get a better look. "Wait, who did this."

"Who the hell do you think, genius," you snarl, push-pulling yourself away. "Just do me this solid, okay? AI in the elevator, goes by FRIDAY." You stagger to a stand, wipe the snot from under your nose with the back of your wrist.

Clonedave raises his hands, palms flat. "Awright bossman, don't pop a vessel." He hops from the sink, and it's not a long way to drop because he is all legs.

You wait until Clonedave leaves to crouch, sitting on your heels, elbows on wobbling knees, wrists pressing furiously behind your ears, trying to scrub your anxiety out, chest tight and jaw restless.

"Hey," Clonedave appears in less time, drops your packed duffel beside you with a slap of tile. "I looped to save time. Hope you weren't heart-set on the twenty minutes of emotional wank on which you were about to embark." His canvas sneaker toes your bare heel, nearly wobbling you over. "Hey. I gotcher shit. We can blow this popstand if it's making you so miserable."

"I'd like that," you whisper, fingers laced together behind your neck. "But Bro said to stay."

Clonedave snorts, joins you in your crouch. "Why."

"Gotta marry Captain America." Gotta change his mind, maybe even take advantage of that whole 'duty' shtick, however unwooed your ass was gonna remain.

There is a long pause, then, "And Captain America is... who. Exactly."

"The guy." You thrust a hand out. "The literal actual superhero guy."

There is another long pause. Clonedave looks around, pulls his shades off, squints up at the ceiling. "Like the ffff-" he takes a breath, continues the dry hiss of the consonant, "Fffffffucking. Comic." He coughs. "Book."

"I think they made a cartoon, too," you mumble into your forearm. "Literal actual historical figure Captain America, yes."

Clonedave's nostrils flare and contract. He doesn't have as many scars as you, his hair is different, and he's wearing a high-waisted jean jacket over a black wifebeater two sizes too big for him, which hurts to look at. "Are there other comic book. People." He demands evenly. "Or just the one you're supposed to marry, presumably because your Ambrose has a shitty sense of humor."

Sometimes Brodie is Ambrose, a Broderick or a Derrick, or Dirk. Sometimes their Brodie is better than yours. Sometimes he's worse, in ways you can't fathom and never want to ask after.

"Besides _us?"_ You squawk, unsure if the Striders ever made it to the bodega pulp racks.

Clonedave scoffs, plants his hand against your back to push himself up. "Fair point. So this is a super-hero universe. Aces. What's the drama?" Most Daves arrived pre-loaded with your thought process, didn't have to ask too many questions, knew which enemies against which they were pointed, a streamline of intent, part of you, commandable. This wasn't a fight, though, and the errand was run but you still wanted for company.

You stand, too, gingerly curling your shirt up over your head and off. Clonedave hucks the duffel up on the sink, slaps the zipper open, digs around to hand off an _I Love Lucy_ t-shirt and a ratty pair of sweats. "It's nighttime out there," he explains. "Sleep will do you good."

You step out of your cargo capris and slick-damp briefs in one, the air in the bathroom gone wet and floral.

"Holy fuck, dude," Clonedave laments muzzily, visibly swooning against the sink. "Why is god-Me always so fucking weird." Sometimes, to your mystification, the Daves didn't know how sex worked - or didn't understand the vagaries of second genderhood, Beta-null from worlds long extinct of their breeding allstars, doomed timelines indeed.

You push past to ruffle a set of holey boxers from the bag. "Get some, bitch," you challenge, low. When Brodie's training went slack, there was always a different Dave to spar, after all.

Clonedave does not take that as an invitation to fight, however, and you're two arms full and half a bitten kiss past giving a shit if you get walked in on, jay-bird naked and too miserable to forfeit this old comfort. No worse than masturbation, you used to mumble to yourself, Meg-sticky between two clones in the motel rooms that used to suit your concert tours. You never slept alone a day in your life, and you'd never have to.

"Gay," you scold quietly, Megan arousal loud in the air.

"Sad," Clonedave accuses back, knees dipping down to tug your hips against him, standing straight to lift you onto your toes, gripping fingers digging into your ass. "Freeze it, they won't even know."

"Already did." You let your legs dangle, knees spreading, arms over Clonedave's shoulders as he sets you on the sink, knocks the bag over - clothes catching mid-air in their tumble, time flickering slow. You lick into the sucking kiss until your jaw aches, until your ass is wet against the clammy stone of the sink counter, and you hover your open mouth against Clonedave's all through the fevered grinding, because you're some kind of sap.

Clonedave gets his dick out, and it's pierced, and you laugh, and Clonedave gets his dick in, and the silver stud drags up deep into you, and you do not laugh.

* * *

You walk out of the bathroom in t-shirt and boxers, sink-bathed and dried by a spare shirt, smelling no worse than yourself on you, the room you're leaving tidied by your mysteriously helpful clone summon. Maybe if you ever woke up from one of your deaths, and it was not in the place you last fell but right in front of another version of yourself, you'd shrug and agree to help that Dave, too, without condition. Not like there was anything better to do in the ether of non-existence.

"That was quick," Stark notes from his perch at the counter island, peering at your leggy half-nudity through a hologram project opened up into the air. He's trim for an old dude, notable only because heroes in your line of work didn't usually live to see their crow's feet and salted hair, especially the mortal-mundane kind.

You shrug, let your duffel drop from your shoulder to a stool, take a seat beside. "Force of habit."

Stark nods, removes his attention from the holograph to eye you head to toe again, taking his time on the dents in muscle that scarring had left on your legs. "You headed in?"

"Yeah." You accept the glass of water from Pepper, eye half on the bower, crowded anew. "You wanna forego the workshop, tonight?"

Stark blinks, checks with Pepper as if he'd misheard. "Do I want to..." he leads, for clarification.

"Chaperone..." you mock the lead, rolling a fist open, "The Megan you've recently... bought..."

Tony withdraws, wincing. "Don't say 'bought'. Hired. I hired a Megan on. And uh," he considers the bower, the entire-ass crowd of people who have settled in at various states of pyjama'd or not, conversing quietly, dozing, passing bottled water and an open handle of rum. "I'll make an appearance," Tony answers, visibly reluctant. "What do you need, exactly?"

"Don't need anything." You're not in a good mood, per se, but your mood has improved, a fraction of your courage returned, wits fortified. "Would rather not shrivel up into a raisin over the course of the night, so, chaperone. Would be nice. From my custodian."

Pepper blinks, concluding the metaphor before Tony does. "You can always bunk with us, Dave. Open invitation."

"I also don't want to hurt the Captain's feelings," you mumble, bending in to keep your voice low. What you meant to say, was that you didn't want to offend the Head of House any further than you had done, already, but Tony didn't need to know about your shitty loss of composure back at the gym.

"He does want everyone getting along," Tony agrees, cheek bulging as he tongues a molar. "Okay, Dee, I'll get you settled. Might not see you in the morning, though, just a heads up."

Pepper pushes away from the table, smile carrying in her eyes. "I'll get my flannels on." She taps your elbow in passing. "You don't want Tony sleeping in, anyway, he snores."

Tony closes his jaw with a click and watches Pepper depart like a puppy watching its ball get away, fiercely determined to get her back, stupid with love.

Blessedly, Sawtooth appears silhouetted by one of the windows, obscure as a coat rack, a comfort from home you didn't know you needed. You end up settled down in the bower between Banner and Tony, absolutely drowning in nerdtastic space-time sciencetalk until Pepper returns in buttoned PJs to suggest a less fevered topic of discussion, like politics or religion.

"No such thing as god, and taxes are illegal," Tony counters fondly, hiking both arms up and back to pillow for you and Pepper on either side, his legs crossed at the ankles. "Don't tell Cap I said that."

"I am telling Cap you said that," Banner protests mildly, sliding his readers off to pinch the grit out of his eyes.

"Nark," you accuse, uninvested, the glow of Tony's chest piece an audible pitch through the ribs against your ear. You can smell the perfume of Pepper's makeup remover as she settles against Tony's free side, and Natalie's athletic warmth bundles up behind you, and close your eyes to -

\- wake to a darkened bower, senses alert and heart hammering into doubletime. You curl to a ginger sit, then stand in ninja silence to peer around the dark.

The familiar pinpricks of red light five feet toward the kitchen let you know Sawtooth has joined the den, and your heart leaps into your throat to grasp for hope, hope that maybe Bro was in there somewhere, telling Saw where to go, where to observe, checking up on you like he used to. You FLASH from the pocket of warmth you'd fallen asleep in, balance barefoot at the edge of the bower, shivering, almost scared to approach because you want to savor the possibility of Brodie's cognizance, presence, without proving yourself wrong.

"He changed position about an hour ago," Steve Rogers quietly asserts from his place at the kitchen counter, scaring you out of your breath. "Assuming this is a 'he', I guess."

"Sawtooth," you croak, a whispered introduction as you approach the kitchen headed for a cupboard, for a water glass. "Don't let Houston hear you assign a gender to an inanimate object, but yeah, I consider him a 'him'." You twirl the glass on the heel of your palm and rinse it twice under the tap before filling it at the fridge dispenser. "What're you doin' up."

Rogers shrugs, still studying the rigid, uncloaked back of Brodie's latest assault on space-time reality. "I don't sleep much, after the serum."

"Handy." You pause, take a sip of water. "For an Alpha."

"Handy for a dangerous lifestyle, for anyone. What are _you_ doing up?"

Your brain is not yet switched over to the engine of waking thought, so you answer honestly - "I felt Bro watching me, like he used to." You lose your breath again, realizing how weird that might sound. "Sixth sense training, is what we used to - uh. And anyway, it was just Sawman over here; which I mean, same difference? Maybe Bro was watching; Saw's got a nannycam, though I don't know how I'da figured that out subconsciously, right?"

Rogers squints. "Pete's got a similar sensitivity, you could ask him. Anthony likes the Gutan theory of presence-forward, but the books on that are, uh," his mouth goes all slanty and rueful, "Probably right up your alley, actually. Micro-travel of perceptions through time and space, pure theory when they were written, but now..." Steve sighs, and it's _Steve_ talking to you, not Captain Rogers; it's Steve with the bedhead and the quiet nerdy passion and the glint of kindness in eyes gone soft in the dark. "Whole new ballgame."

'New' isn't the word you'd use to describe the ballgame, but then you remember that Steve didn't get to live through the sixties, when pop culture's love affair with science fiction really began to take off. "Tell me you've seen Star Trek," you press, taking the corner stool opposite Steve's perch at the island counter.

Steve dusts his fingertips together, a plate before him catching crumbs from some snack gone unwitnessed in the dead of night. "I've been informed on Star Trek, yes. I think most people get the bulk of their TV-watching done and over with when they're still in school; that's definitely the only time in my life I could rack up the radio hours to any significance."

"Unsubtle hint that it's the consumerist youth and largely unemployed who drive entertainment in media, but ok. When you're sixty, and retired, you'll watch Star Trek." You take a sip of water, and cough a little, waking. "Them college kids writing that shit had good taste, you won't be ruined for it by then."

Steve exhales, and it's not a laugh and not a scoff but it is some sort of congratulation, capitulation, something, because there's a smile there that actually lifts your spirits a bit to see. "When I'm retired -" he stops, reading some distant script in the scuffed chrome of the countertop. "Lord. I don't even _want_ to think what kind of responsibilities I'll have when I'm sixty. I don't think they'll even let me say 'no' once I qualify for highest office, they'll just -" he blinks, has to bite down on his chuckle to keep it quiet, mindful of the family now stirring around the bower. "Ooph."

You glance sharply up. "You don't qualify now? Or is the 'Venger gig political enough already?"

Steve asks a momentary question with his eyebrows, but his smile is apologetic. "I think you have to be 35 to run for President, sorry, should have specified."

You blink. Slow. "I'm... the sorry one, here, uh, you don't qualify because...?"

Rogers shrugs with his mouth, folding the napkin over the crumbs. "I'm technically only 28."

You grimace. "Good _God,_ man. No offense, but you look... uh. Traveled. Have you - I mean when's the last time you took a vacation?" What you Don't Know, was that Steve Rogers has recently recovered from an altercation with a ghost from his past, the physical pain that saw him hospitalized not days prior this evening only a shadow of the emotional pain that would pounce on any quiet hours he was left to his own thoughts.

Steve avoids your study, well aware the toll the Winter Soldier has taken out under his eyes. "Does a mission in Belize count? I got to use my passport and everything."

Natalie, and her fellow assassin-type light sleeper Clint Barton, approach the kitchen on silent feet, trading yawns. "Not more age talk," Nat protests as she circles Sawtooth to get to the pocket of light cast down from the cupboard underheads. "Steve looks great, for a centenarian."

"Nobody gets out of this job looking great," Barton agrees from his own collection of scars, scuffling briefly with Nat for a post at the coffee maker. "You kids heading out?"

Steve shakes his head no. "Kinda early for the perimeter check. Thought I'd pass time in the workshop, but someone must have spiked Tony's bourbon because he's sound asleep."

You sit upright, teeth flashing. "On the floor, too, that's gonna suck in the morning." You're half out of your seat to see about waking your custodian, getting his exceptionally mortal and definitely-over-35 corpus to a bed.

But Steve just waves you back down to your stool. "He sleeps on bare metal workbenches, Dee, the bower floor is an upgrade."

You sit, slowly, the early morning exhaustion creeping back in, fogging your thoughts. Natalie and Clint trade banter in whispers and mumbles and scoffs, old mission references and obscure professional in-jokes, and you half listen while the coffee maker burbles to life and Steve studies you through the gloom.

Your eyes twitch to focus on Steve, and it's honestly a bit of a struggle to keep them open all the way. "What's up."

Steve's expressions are always only a smidge away from some sarcastic pull, you can tell, but he centers himself easily back to sincerity, burying whatever interesting thing he was actually going to say, to your disappointment. "Did you want to go back to sleep? It'll be three hours before the House is awake, longer if we're counting everyone."

You realize that you'd planted yourself in the stool as an assumption; that just because Steve waved down Tony's need for a bed didn't mean he was waving you down to stay seated, and you wince. "Uhh, just trying to figure out what to do with Saw," you fib, recovering some pride. "Since I'd rather he stay in the workshop, but I can't really go up there alone," you tilt your head, let some of your annoyance slide right on into your tone, "And since that's Tony's space, you really wouldn't be an appropriate escort, right?"

Steve is nodding, has already gathered the remnants of his midnight meal, napkin and plate and cloudy milk glass. "Always better to apologize than ask permission," he says, that dour sarcastic guy showing up at last. "We can put your robot back where he came from, Dave, and Tony can talk to me about that if he needs to."

You watch, owl-eyed, as Rogers rounds the kitchen to set dishes in the sink, paper napkin in the recycle compactor, the kitchen modern enough that each pull of drawer or hiss of appliance is but a muted whisper.

Natalie rescues you from your mild panic, "Need a chaperone?"

Steve frowns, rinsing his hands, and bends to mop water over his face, the back of his neck, waking up a bit better maybe. "It'll only take ten minutes."

Barton leans in to let you know, hey, he really hopes not, and nudges you in the small of your back as he rounds the island to follow Natalie back to the bower. This startles a laugh out of you, a short blurp that you stifle with both hands, elbows planted forward on the counter island and shoulders hiked up.

Saw had turned his regard toward your noise, metal head rotating completely around on his neck like an owl, and you leave the table to try and figure a way to get him to move toward the elevator doors. "Roof?" You hazard, drawing from the handful of keywords you know he can recognize. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the box because he was a pretty old model; probably only running the nanny program for lack of user input, at Brodie's absence, and your heart pangs doubly for everything Bro had up and abandoned, or been stolen away from.

Saw knows 'roof', and rights his body to match the direction of his head, then FLASHes to the foyer, and fuck you are not yet used that shit from the clunky ol' loomerbot. SQUAREWAVE is waiting for you in the elevator, stuck in a muted rap-battle with his own reflection in the shiny metallic wainscoting, gears click-rattling softly as he winds down to step obediently aside. Square's jaw clatters as you crouch to his side, and you search out his audio dial under the stiff red denim of his shitty trucker hat - but the dial has been wrenched free, an unusual sign of abuse.

Saw pauses halfway in the elevator, practically filling the entrance, baseball cap brushing the top of the jamb. His head spins slowly on its axis again to face Steve, who has kept a cool distance to let the elevator settle in. Saw bends an arm back to halt Steve in his step, and Saw's wrist rotates to hold his hand up, all four sectional robot digits curling in like a fist, middle digit left lifted, a clear communication.

"Uhh," you bluster, pushing up from Square's shoulders. "Sorry, his protocol is kind of specifically guardian-esque."

Steve nods, hands braced on hips. "Anything you can do about this, FRI?" he asks upward, teeth showing in doubt.

"Doable," FRIDAY confirms melodiously, and Sawtooth stills, slackens, eases into the elevator with a lifeless wobble. "Shall I disable any rudimentary programming further?"

"No," you beg, a little too loudly. "No, uh, don't - please don't fuck with Bro's failsafes, I know for _sure_ Square here is packing like a bomb."

"Your brother sent you a _bomb?"_ Steve presses, stepping into the elevator at last to thumb your destination.

"Not my brother," you remind, smarting still from Brodie's vamoosery. "And he probably didn't send these dweebs, no. If he's not at the apartment any more, they'll have searched for the nearest Strider, and, presumably by reading my phone GPS, met me at the warehouse." 

"Met you at the warehouse," Steve continues, standing at parade rest beside Saw's stoicism as the elevator shuts, begins to lift, "Because they can travel faster than light, like you?"

"They didn't used to," you affirm, nodding, the subject hashed over at the dinner table to a nearly exhaustive end. If they weren't literal actual time machines, they were at least time- _pausing_ machines, the next closest thing.

"Strider," FRIDAY prompts over the hum of the running elevator, and you perk. 

"Uh," you shift on the balls of your feet, tsinelas squeaking. "Yeah?"

"Our guest is engaging rooftop protocol."

You eyeball Sawtooth doubtfully, share a puzzled frown with Steve. "Are you su--"

The elevator doors chime open to Tony's suite foyer, and SQUAREWAVE rattles like an old timey alarm clock.

You FLASH backwards a few steps, freezing time - only a little, only enough to get Steve's bulk shoved around Sawtooth's bulk, and clear you both of the elevator just before the hot bloom of Squarewave's detonation fills the cabin and spills out into the foyer, consuming both pots of bamboo and the nearest edge of a couch.

The blister of the explosion sucks the clarity out of the air, smoke and chemical raining in. Fire alarms klaxxon, overhead flame suppressants activated, an antiseptic taste; you had pressed Steve up against the wall to clear you of the blast radius, and can feel Steve's chest lose and then catch his breath against your back and shoulder, shivering with ill surprise.

"Rooftop protocol," Steve echoes as the fire is quickly contained, extinguished, the elevator crooked and cratered, filling with foam.

"No," you answer, voice muted in the tinnitus of the explosion, as Sawman steps calmly out of the elevator, foam clinging to his cape. The way Saw had positioned himself, as if to block Steve from the door, from escape... "No man, I think that was a bonafide hit."

"What?" Steve slides out from behind you to study the damage, wringing a finger in his ear.

"Conduction override," FRIDAY warns, and you only just manage to flash-grab a scorched bamboo pot to whisk at Sawtooth's FLASHED strike; Steve flinching from the spray of dirt and pottery and - "Rooftop protocol engaged," FRIDAY announces, rote. "Assistance incoming, Captain."

But you and SAWTOOTH are off down the windowed hall; you hadn't thought to bring your Captcha nor your sword, and every block of Saw's metallic blows jar you all the way to your molars, bones bruising. Did Brodie really hype his favorite fucking life-companions just to send a gack squad after Mr. America? Why? You can't even assume that Saw's guardian protocol had gone a little crazy-dad on your psuedo-beau, since Saw was doing a fine damb job of putting some sorta unfriendly hurt on _you,_ now, whatever the guise of protocol might be.

Simple enough to keep a root prog name and rewrite the code under it; simple enough to hide an evil intention from an overhead AI who might otherwise be able to intervene.

Turns out you're a hundred times more apt at kicking robot ass than you are at sparring Alpha, and by the time you've quartered Saw's intemperate flash-brawl into the workshop you've got a better read on his attack patterns - and can sacrifice the structural integrity of your shoulder blade to chance a grab at the nearest sword-ish length of metal. 

Saw's expected shattering blow to the flat of your shoulder doesn't land, however, as Iron Man's automated suit plasma-beams the strike off center.

"What's the ruckus?" Tony's sleep-fogged voice mumbles out from the empty helmet. "Can't leave you kids alone for five minutes."

You are paralyzed, paused there at the side of that workshop table watching poor Sawtooth getting systematically dismantled under the stutter-shots of Iron Man's hand cannon. "Mind the 'munitions cache," you warn between catching your breath, and Iron Man relents before his retaliation can breech the rocket pocket of Saw's chassis. "Thought you'd want some of that preserved," you croak as the Iron Suit powers down. "I could have dismantled him, saved some of that time travel programming."

"Nah," Tony answers, voice clearer. "Hey, what happened to the elevator." His voice drifts, presumably traveling away from FRIDAY's overhead mic system, diverting from the lower floor's elevator to the emergency stairwell. "Gotta make me do cardio before sunrise..."

Steve had arrived right before Saw's immediate defeat, pale and grim, weaponless but ready to fucking rumble.

Your arms and forelegs ache - worse than ache, they throb, and tingle, and you're suddenly freezing, terrified, betrayed. No doubt about it; Brodie, or someone with a passable knowledge of the code used in the brodiebots, had just tried to kill someone. A living, breathing, thinking, feeling _someone,_ not a bug or an alien or a malicious patch of code, but a person. And not even you, not even some immortal popup punching clown, but Steve Rogers, mild flavor immortal, softest Highlander.

You stare, mute, as the workshop's wheelie grabber-bot approaches what remains of Sawtooth - of the dangerous, aggressive, _expressive_ Sawtooth anyway, not the stoic sentry you used to trust, who so used to fascinate your wild postulations on the merits of AI and the projections of the insanely lonely. He might have still smelled like home, but the Saw that had arrived at the Complex was just another toy soldier, laying the hurt on extreme wildberry flavor, prostrate there on the workshop floor while a much dumber AI piles on the extraneous fire extinguisher foam.

Steve brushes his fingertips against the back of your elbow, and you flicker in place, surprised a little that it's barbell-dick Clonedave who answers. They don't usually repeat a visit, the Daves, lost to the wash of infinite timelines, infinite Daves that could summon them anew. "Ow," you complain, loudly, over the tinnitus from the explosion. "Any and all physical comfort can be directed at my assistant, here, whose limbs are, as you can see, undented -" You sway out of Steve's radius of grasp, and nearly stumble when your leg complains about its tibia and, more worryingly, fibula. "Don't -" you warn as Clonedave gets a shoulder under your shoulder, and just plain scream when your arm is jostled for him to do so. "Hard reset," you beg.

Clonedave winces, checks behind you for Rogers, who is hovering. "You sure?"

"Hard reset before Stark gets up here and we have to scar _two_ civilians, please."

"What's -" Steve says, but Clonedave has his 'Dex, and his Specibus, and therefore his BROEKEN SORD.

"Clean kill," you suggest, the blinding pain in your limbs already eased of their gnaw at the prospect of returning fresh. "Ribcage, NOT - not breastbone. Between the ribs."

"Yeah, yeah," Pierced Dave drawls, and doesn't even relent you to your feet to slide his weapon in, stopping your heart, stopping time, stopping all the pain.

You wake up coughing, still draped over Clonedave's shoulder, hot blood gluing your t-shirt all down your side and soaking into your boxers, running thick and dark to follow the valley of scarring on your leg. "So much easier," you sigh, dipping your weight into Clonedave's embrace. "Than months of plaster fucking cast-"

",Civilian'?" Steve argues, belatedly.

Clonedave spares you the raised eyebrows of insincere sympathy, and FLASHES back to the ether, or the endless loop of timeline skipping, whichever, which leaves you to your own two feet, still a bit achy but definitely not on broken bones.

Steve, "I'm not a civilian; and neither is -"

You _bark,_ a hard short laugh. "That's what you want to say to me, right now?" Helpless, you motion at Saw's remains, out toward the hall leading back to the foyer, its floors glittering with glass that Saw's intemperate brawling had blown out of the windows.

Steve's jaw sets, soot dusting his mussed straw-blonde hair, peppering his cheek and neck, dark all down one damp arm. "We read about what you can do, Dave. It's not going to shock us."

"Sure." You wobble in place, grief-stricken, robots dead and brother gone, and actually fall to your knees like an actual telenova award-winner, newly refreshed kneecaps hitting the cement with a stereo of familiar pain. "Mngh," you grumble, a hot wet building under your tongue, vision swimming with the threat of tears. Steve kneels gingerly three feet away, watching you watch Sawtooth lose his last spark to a deluge of chemical foam.

Your brother was gone, your robots were dead.

"What happened," Stark's voice wheezes from the overhead, taking the stairs up. "I mean, FRI just gave me the play-by-play, so I know what happened, technically, but Dee-"

You wince, because this, this looks _bad,_ this looks really, really bad - show up, fail at mission matrimony, invite volatile murderbots in for tea, nearly kill star Alpha through sheer Striderian idiocy, because Brodie was never - he was _never_ going to leave you, no, this was - you were his weapon, weren't you? Valued? And he knew you, knew you right down to your tender bones, knew you couldn't hack an infiltration, couldn't take someone's life, weren't made out for this line of next-level world tour revenge (??), so he'd sent you in blind, used you as a placeholder, sacrificed his pawns with full confidence that your trust in the 'bots would see you exploded, would see you return unharmed, hard reset, having lost nothing worse than your naivety, because it wasn't like these people were supposed to _mean_ anything to you, not yet, not _so soon_ past Brodie's capture -

The groan ekes out of your throat as you sink forward, hands braced on cold indifferent cement. This looked _so bad, what the fuck._

Pepper precedes Tony's arrival, dewy and red-faced from the stairwell race, and _you_ are _losing_ your everloving _shit._

"What happened," Pepper demands rhetorically, pale where she isn't splotchy with exertion. "Steve, are you -"

Steve intercepts, a football lunge to delicately gather Pepper back, corral her back to the hallway entrance, in case Sawtooth's rocket cache was still volatile.

You groan again, sinking to your elbows to smack your forehead against the wet floor, plagued by an anxious narration, cascade failure of cool, like they don't trust you now, like Steve doesn't trust you, like Steve is telling Pepper to stay back, to keep Tony away, because _he doesn't fucking trust you._

Brodie never tells you anything, he just lets you act how he mercilessly predicts you will act, because you're just a human being, just some dumb chunk of clay he tried to mold in his image. That was a hit, you know it in your guts. You know what rooftop protocol looks like - ceremonial bows and epic fronting, waiting for your opponent to actually fucking arm themselves, following the slow repetition of forms because the bots weren't for sparring, had never been built to strife, couldn't even flash before this week - and that wasn't no goddamn rooftop protocol.

The room spins, you're having a panic attack and you don't even know if you should be, what, sad, or. If Brodie had intended the hit to succeed, it would have left you stranded - and sure, you're a Strider, you're independent and self-possessed, you're resourceful, you would have found each other again, eventually. If Brodie had not intended for the hit to land, if his _intent_ had been your intervention, had been a setup to launch you into the superhero spotlight at the sacrifice of his, what, reputation or -

You don't know what's going on, what this is about. You don't know anything. You don't _know._

"I'll handle it," Steve mumbles, louder, as if in argument. "Let Tony know we're safe; but I need the room."

Pepper mumbles back, and you can't hear it, head ringing. Your mouth builds up with wet, a flood pushing up under your tongue, rattling your breath, seeping out from between your grimacing teeth in a hot dribble, and your eyes join in on the leak, feral break venting your skin to a heady flush, clothes damp now where they weren't wet with blood or flame repellent. This isn't your first feral break, honestly, but you don't know that. This is just what you consider a panic attack, with similar symptoms, flavored by what you assumed was just Weird Skybaby Shit, as you'd had these since you were, what, thirteen and begging Bro for comfort? Ten and back from your first death? Six and fevered by the auto-immune response to your first broken arm?

You wince and try to flicker, try to gather your Daves around you, desperate to be touched and pretty fucking much over trying to impress anybody, but the Daves never come if you let yourself get this bad, robbed of your concentration, and you couldn't even FLASH, thoroughly disabled, all twisted up inside and gasping like a stomped fish.

They are going to arrest you, probably, and you'll have to run away soon, and you'll have to get your shit together so you can GoFast again, but the more you try to center yourself the worse you unravel, every breath a scrape of Omegan plea; you press your face, nose to chin, hard into the cold painted cement to try and stifle the babble, the noise of it worse in your own ears, worse to your distress; Brodie would have been here by now, laying hands on, commands grounding you (god, you miss him - god he can't be dead, he can't be _gone_ from you, he promised -).

The word you babble, a name, a nickname really, an inside weab joke and a heartfelt plea; _"Aniki -"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments so far:
> 
> eh, yes, this is NOT my first foray into writing, this is just a *shame account* where i post and bookmark all the suuuuper uncomfortable stuff i don't want to scare my friends with over on the main
> 
> out-of-comfort-zone commenter: same. but i like to face super dark and noncanon concepts as CHALLENGES, to see if i can write them at all realistically or keep characters IC or w/e but also see how it would change them (or if it would change them at all, re: Dave is chilldude McGillicutty who respects his own station in life even if that station is traditionally considered 'less than')
> 
> writing question: iiiii used to RP with the wifey but mostly now i just share ideas and she helps them make sense. she's a homestuck way more than an MCU nerd like me, so this is... not as interesting to her, i guess? and i was kind of trolling her when i proposed the plot, because it haunted me for like a full weekend, so this is one big running joke that goes too hard because i have no chill


	9. I : IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: medical trauma, death, blithe summary of zygote imperilment

Your name is DAVE STRIDER, semi-celebrity portal explorer, DJ and veterate fuckup, not yet an Avenger, and you are NINETEEN YEARS OLD the first time ever Hilde Baumgartner is admitted into Houston General Hospital.

It's not the first time that you've stabbed yourself - a lazy but convenient method to 'hard reset' your corpus, instead of months of painful wound recovery - but it is the first time you've asked a clone and been refused.

Feral status, like any mental illness, expresses itself on a spectrum - it is theorised that every living person proves 'feral' in some way under duress, in the distant reaches of their hindbrain.  The feral 'break', then, is the moment of incident wherein physical reaction to perception elicits measurable physical harm to the sufferer, or others. It was a standing point of academic contention, thus, what should qualify a 'break' point for Omegan ferality; psychological and physiological schools of medicine setting their criteria at distinct ends of the scale.

Psychologically, mentally, a 'break' was a departure from objective reality so definitive as to render the patient unreachable by regular methods of communication, verbal or physical.  Physically, however, a 'Meg in a break couldn't technically hurt anyone else, limiting the boundaries of criminal definition. 

In truth, the puratinism of the early colonial Anglo-Protestant west had so rearranged the concept of a functioning Household as to render Omegans quite abused, and vulnerable to mental breakage, though the medical community would not even have the language to address this until the civil rights enlightenment of the 1960s.

The basic rule of _your_ life, Dave Strider, is as Natalie Romanov would later suppose - that yours was a childhood steeped in violence, and to that stress had you acclimated, high function ferality but ferality nonetheless, tempered by Houston's dissociative training.  You never suspected yourself ill, or vulnerable to a breaking point, because yours was a normal steeped in distress - and you'd rarely had outside witness to the worst of your 'panic attacks', since your public life was never as distressing in all its ups and downs, petty losses and mild disagreements, shining stage-side triumphs and calm, cool, collected friendships.

You are not feral the day you send yourself to HGH, you're just depressed.

Two nights ago, Brodie had asked you to start a House with him, kissed the back of your head and knotted you with uncharacteristic affection.  Two nights ago, Brodie had left you to his bed alone until morning, then stepped out of the apartment early for milk or eggs or something, and not come back. This was not so unusual - Bro came and went at his leisure, but he always let you know what was going on.  By the third night of your growing panic, you have a single (1) text from Broderick's phone with a simple line of information, the serial number for an Auction Bid.

You're standing against the kitchen sink when you brave the phonecall, and to your surprise Brodie actually answers.  You don't even know what to say, your questions pile up and interrupt each other, stalling you out, bare feet gone cold on warm linoleum.

"You'll getcher fag ass on up to New York," Brodie demands evenly.  "And you'll make good with the good Captain Rogers."

"What about -" Your teeth click shut.  The Household proposal could have been a fake-out.  A test.  An ironic mockery of your shithouse insane dream to disappear with Bro into the anons, for the Striders to become the mysterious legends that had been made of them, answering to no State, no border or law, glimpsed only at the height of Earth's perils. Bro had told you, over and over, that he wanted you to get on with living your life. That he would buy you as much time as possible to get your shit in order, but he couldn't defy the State, that even to try would be more trouble than reward, that you'd have to go to war with the world.

Brodie sighs.  "Did you read the reports on the kitchen table?"

You hadn't.  The manila folder haunted you, implication thrown to every corner of the flat.  Brodie got the gene reports, Brodie disappeared.  You didn't read those reports, those things were obviously cursed.  Your lack of answer speaks loudest.

"It's worse than 'ain't right', D.  It's wrong.  What we'd make, bein' that?  To each other?  Worse than wrong."

But what the hell did Bro ever care that you might have been as closely related as to bein' the same fuckin' dude, even? He'd theorize that you were his 'kid', sometimes, just to gross you out, making a joke of the horrified fit your Terran inferiors would pitch over the incest, sibling or otherwise.  Your mouth works, tongue dry, shocked at this sudden moralizing from the nihilist of the family.  "I can get - look, man," you babble, voice cracked, and scrub your fingers through your panic-greasy hair.  "I can get sterilized.  We don't gotta - where will you even go, dude, look - I can cool it, I can give you your space, I can get that place with Egbert, I just -" you hiccough, awaiting the return of Brodie's voice, wet building under your tongue. You can't get that place with Egbert - not really, not without an Alpha's sign-on.  "You can take it back," you gasp, unraveling from the inside out, "We can go back to normal, blud, I just need you back _home."_

You don't know why you need that, exactly, only that the sudden Brodie-shaped hole in your life had left you in a tailspin. Bro said he'd give you time, give you rope, as much rope as you needed. Rope to tie him up with, to unspool over three years of pretend contentment, of letting your guard down, of dumb stupid idiocy. He wouldn't leave you, he said. Not to the State, and not to some bored fatcat Alpha collecting for her harem; he wouldn't leave you alone, he'd be there, he'd wait, he'd let you make up your mind.

"It's a shame," Broderick answers, at last, a strangely formal distinction to his tone.  "You are very beautiful, David, and I would have cherished the Household we built together.  Do as I say, or you will never see me again."  This is Arnim Zola speaking, but you don't know that.  For all you know, Brodie's been acting out an ironic macho-Texan theater role just to raise you, and has recently bored of the pretense.  The line clicks, deadens.

Shaking, you set the flat brick of your phone down on the kitchen table, and pluck up the first page of the genetic report.

This is the day you ask several Daves each to do you a favor that you end up having to do yourself, and there's a funny story in there, somewhere, about heartbreak and falling on your own sword, and (and).  This is the day Hilde Baumgartner is admitted into Houston General Hospital with a severe case of abdominal trauma, un-killed as of yet because you don't want this wound to reset, because you want to lose the organs inside of you that so threatened Broderick with genetic horror.  If you were sterile, if you were without-a-doubt never going to get knocked up, maybe Brodie would calm his tits, see reason, come back to you, back home where it was safe.  Maybe.

Or, if none of that went down, then  _fine,_ you'd just go ahead and ruin yourself for any future Auction bids, out of spite.  You'd make yourself totally useless to Captain Oligarchy even if he did want some chewed-up Alien Yokel like yourself, fuck.  _Fuck._

The blood pools thick and hot down your pantleg while you call the ambulance, and you're worried about the livingroom carpet, because at this point you still plan to return here, to live here, to have Brodie back.  Dear sweet Hilde Baumgartner is thus admitted to HGH, and two weeks later you, David Elizabeth Strider, would join the Avengers, quite ignorant of the huge red flag on Hilde's release papers detailing both your elevated stress hormones (feral cautionary) and the first hint of your pregnancy.

Your name is Dave Strider, and you were TWO MONTHS PREGNANT the night Arnim Zola mistook you for Houston's new, unseeded bride.  There was only ever a 90+ percent chance Bro's vasectomy could prevent this, after all, and you'd been pretty happily shtupping each other all the more closer to your State contract end, beholden to no law, soon to be out from under the thumb of your watchers, and so what if you did get knocked up - you wouldn't owe anybody any answers.

They could try to jail either of you for disobedience to the State; keyword fucking *try*. But with the Hellportals gone you really wouldn't owe anybody anything, not your labor or your obedience or even your presence in their borders, under their laws.

When you opt for the scrambled organs, you nick an artery or two too deep, and when you die in the operating room and your anesthetized corpse resets with a smooth map of scar tissue where a disembowelment used to be, the surgeon faints. And when you wake up in the hospital bed less than twenty minutes later to make your escape, you have a fresh wound from the place the aides had to cut you open again to retrieve the surgical tools your resurrecting body cavity had gormlessly swallowed. You assume this is your original injury, neatly grafted by the miracle of modern medicine. And, because it was tissue that was still a part of your body, reliant on the frame of your innards to live, the God-baby inside of you resurrects when you do, returned to the healed reproductive scaffolding that housed it; again to your unchallenged, complete, all-encompassing ignorance.

* * *

Your name is Dave Strider, and you are TWO AND A HALF MONTHS PREGNANT the night Squarewave detonates in the Avengers Complex elevator.  None of your Pack could guess at your condition, knowing no default scent from which you could deviate - and if Brodie had ever found your smell gone a little more chalk-and-honey, well, he hadn't met enough other pregnant people to draw that conclusion, either. You yourself have never had an earnest Heat, and can't guess at their lack - your 'panic attacks' an apt mimicry, for Megs feraled much the same as they suffered their seasonals, and who the hell in the Strider House was even keeping track. Deliriously, you had thought Brodie meant to have you.

Steve Rogers is also unaware of your condition, because Steve Rogers does not yet know dear sweet Hilde's release prognosis, because duh, that was the point of using an Alias; so Steve Rogers had suggested a hormone shot that had, to the ignorance of everyone involved, triggered the opposite of a suppression within your system; a triple-threat of sparring stress, bot betrayal and hormonal upheaval within you building up to a massive, unmistakable Feral Fucking Break.

Not even you can deny it, at this point - the constant outpour of saliva has started to visibly foam from the corners of your mouth, pocket returns of air trapped from your ragged, hyper breathing; and for half a terrifying, breathless moment you can't articulate, can't even grunt or whine or moan, can't focus your eyes and can't move. You descend back down from this break plateau to rock your forehead against the floor, gripping your stomach, wet with blood down your front and wet with appeal down your backside, body begging for whatever Alpha was nearby to show mercy.

 _"Aniki,"_ you keen as soon as your seize wanes.  You're alone, you're sick and hurting and the nannybots who raised you had just been corrupted and destroyed.

Pepper cusses from the hall and there is a brief argument, loud and frenetic with Beta scorn, words like 'medical' and 'contact' and 'glass' floating into your consciousness through the tingle of your ears straining to savor Alpha Command.  What glass, you wonder muzzily, the bottoms of your cork tsinelas stuck through by shards that had been blown out from the hall by the force of Sawtooth's clumsily piloted flash-fighting.

"I'm sorry about your robots," Steve repeats as he kneels to your side, because he's been talking back against your freeflow babble this whole time.  "FRIDAY reported a bug in the code, something called a feedback loop?  In your shorter, uh, friend.  And the bigger guy over here, well," he keeps his tone even, lecturing, light but firm, uncertain of the jargon; "Apparently 'rooftop protocol' means a spar?" 

And as Houston was absent at the time of the command, you're to assume Sawtooth chose the next nearest opponent - which was Steve.  Or, you.  The meaning of Steve's words begin to sink past the noise of them, and his scent threads in through your 86'd brain before anything like reason can precede it. Bro sparred with his bots, sure, but only for form training since they could never flash-step before this week. If they had ever been capable, _you_ would have been sparring them, fuck. The more information you had, the more questions needed answering. 

"I'm sorry, Dave; we can rebuild your robots.  They aren't gone.  You aren't alone," Steve repeats evenly, patiently, the whole assurance, start to finish, a monotone that starts to vibrate in the space between your skin and the cement that soothes it. He's talking to your chemical call, mostly - a desperate souring in the air, a demand for the return of your House. You don't know that you're arguing, that your mouth and throat are bleeding your thoughts, that you're confessing to the assassination attempt you very well _know_ just went down.

Steve sighs, continues to argue you quietly down, "It's called a feedback loop, Dave, and it shorted your squarebot.  Listen to FRIDAY. Sawtooth, he was running rooftop protocol; a sparring program.  I'm sorry about your robots."  Steve scuffs closer, barefoot in his sleeping T and drawstring sweats, glass and blood. 

He smells like Alpha but he doesn't smell like  _the right kind_ of Alpha - because you're pregnant and you don't know it and you want Broderick like a bird wants the sky.  You squirm away, cough up a huge watery gob of spit, snot and tears smeared along the pavement you've vacated, all salt-slick with pheromones.  Steve doesn't want you, doesn't smell like he wants you, smells like a fight, smells like worry and _disgust,_ like high hard anger (because you're gross, because you're ugly and chewed up and used, because you're duplicitous and compulsive and selfish).  He doesn't want you the way that you're scared that Brodie doesn't want you anymore and it hurts; you cry out, a long low wailing keen like you've been stabbed, like you remember being stabbed, poor idiot Hilde left her wallet at home, no ID.

Suspected Strider sighting at HGH thursday morning, viral phone vid blurry, witness testimony at eleven.

"Dave," Steve tries again, gathering the clues that he is getting through to you, counting your breaths and the lines under your skin, tensions of a listening body.  Steve's fingertips brush the back of your elbow and you judder forward, startled, blinking.  Steve exhales, relieved, "Hey, hi," he hushes you, there on the floor, runs a caress down your back that you are embarrassed to receive.

"Fuck off," you growl, because it hurts, because Steve doesn't want you and Brodie doesn't want you and _you_ don't even want you, fevered with the hormone injection you don't know has triggered the exact sort of thing it was meant to prevent, warring with your pregnancy.  You don't even want you, but you want to be wanted, because however practiced you are at recovery from these 'panic attacks' it all still hurts so goddamn  _much._

"Uh," Steve says, plucking his hand up, unprepared for the type of Meg who _doesn't_ wake from a dissociation begging to be held.

"Fuck offh," you slur again, still plastered to the floor, hip against the cement now, too, leaving your backside vulnerable to absolutely zero appreciation.  You don't want pity.  You want Brodie; you want to get the fuck up off the floor with the incentive that Brodie would be waiting at the top of the stairs to dispense with a rare and hard-won embrace.  You work past the gummy cloy in the back of your throat to snark further, but there is a twist in your guts that only advances, doesn't taper off, squeezes your breath down to a pathetic 'oh my god' of disbelief.  Yeah, by now, Brodie would have hugged you - smothered you, really, squished you under him to annoy you back to normal, or to get his dick in while you were starry-eyed and gagging for it.  "You don't want me," you accuse, lament, and your voice is strange, weird, strained, somebody else, somebody young and petulant and - else.

Brodie wanted you, even if just as a weapon.  Brodie didn't want you anymore, maybe (oh god but he could have fought if he'd been taken, or could have told you what was going on at least, could have reassured you), but Brodie used to want you, and you know what that feels like, what it feels like to be seen, owned. You know what it feels like to have that illusion, at least, to steal kisses out of satellite view and bite against a plush toy so the neighbors couldn't hear you getting mounted; to feel as wanted enough to warrant the risk of retaliation from the Press, or the State.

"I'm... upset," Steve admits, voice distant as he looks toward the hall past the mezzanine, toward Tony's arrival.  "With the situation.  I'm not upset with you, D.  You have to know that.  _Back off,"_ he snaps, stalling Tony's descent down the shallow steps.

"Get out of your fucking feelings, Cap," Tony rejoins easily, breathless from his dash up the stairs.

"Anthony,"  Steve Commands, and your guts _writhe._

"Steven," Tony mocks, rich-guy pants-hike of his pyjama sweats before he kneels in front of you, and he smells like - God, he smells like worry and fear and sickness, like bad cardio up too many stairs, and the high thin note of excitement, pure chaotic appreciation for mechanical carnage, or maybe it was just regular Alpha interest, and you nearly sob in relief because hey at least the OLD GUY wants to get some.  And you would, you goddamn would, so you stretch your chin up, neck exposed, pulse jumping just below the skin. 

"My space," Tony asserts dryly at Steve, working a wide warm palm under your head to pillow you from the floor, then further, firmer, a grip behind your neck to sit your awkwardly long body upright, a scruffing that chases another mouthful of spit under your tongue.

"Okay," Steve breathes, and the sound of his voice makes your groin tense, seeps another hot load of slick into your boxers.  "Good, that's - you're doing good, thank you, thanks.  But I," he grits his teeth, a muscle in his jaw flickering.  "Could you let go?  I've got it under hand."

Tony dismisses that claim with a sniff, Pepper's conversation with FRIDAY running background noise.  "You know what?" Tony hikes an eyebrow Steve's way, cool with a long-standing disdain of Rogers' over-'roided sense of self control.  "I got permission to get myself an heir with the first pair of legs that agrees to carry the nine months of extra weight."  He doesn't blink, eyebrows scowled down, antagonizing.  "Hey Dave, how's your legs?  Think they can handle an extra, what, six, seven pounds of human being?"  He shakes you, a little, a playful sway, then stands with a groan and tugs you by the scruff to get you upright, too.  "C'mon, Legs."  It's a direct provocation, bordering on sincerity.

You lurch to a stand, tug the damp shoulder of your shirt up to wipe your face, but you're a zombie; you want to collapse again, helpless for an Alpha to carry you, and in your sobriety you would feel ashamed about this but right now you're just a nervous bundle of unanswered wants, devoid your usual lofty self-sufficiency.

Steve hangs back in the disheveled workshop, barely containing his emotional wafts, anger and disgust like wounds in the open air.  "So I'm just supposed to ignore it?  Anthony, Dave _is feral._   Ignoring how dangerous that is -" Tony's argument is overruled, outshouted - _"Ignoring_ the danger, even, to us, to the recruits in this very building; this man - Jesus, Tony, _this kid_ has been left to twist in the wind for, what, his entire life?  How long did Houston have him, just the two of them?  How long was he fighting?"

"Nine years in th' field," you report, dutifully, roused to escape Steve's  _noise,_ his anger, his incredulity.  You lean hard on Pepper for support, knees and thighs wobbly with the urge to submit.  So Steve couldn't compartmentalize over the horrors of your past, so what.  If he wasn't into you then he wasn't into you, and who _would_ be into a babbling snot-factory all broken up at the soonest strife?  Whooboy them 'Meg hormones could make the dumbest shit matter.  "Saved your goddamn life, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt stain."

But you have to get Brodie back, which was somehow contingent on marriage to America's figurehead, and you're sick to your stomach at the inevitability of your failure.

"I think we can discuss Dave's professional history in the morning," Pepper reminds, expression tight with practiced politesse.  Her grip firms under your forearm as you both sink to a sit on the mezzanine stairs.  The truly bizarre irony here, of course, is that Steve's irritation hadn't ramped until Anthony's arrival, and now the air is more Alpha-quarrel than anything, another feedback loop of slightly angry Steve, angry-because-Steve-is-angry-Tony, then angrier-because-Tony-is-angry-Steve, et c.; this was basically why you didn't build a Pack exclusively of Alphas, their chemical signatures too sympathetic to one another, too easily confused of their target complaints, too given over to back-biting, in-fights.

"Yes, because Dave can't hardly answer for himself right now," Steve says, exasperated, and only steps forward so he can take two steps back, pacing, agitated.  "Because he was sent to us in what I'm assuming is a chronic and undocumented feral state," he laments, arm out, "And what kind of life do you think he's lived, that he's so used to cutting himself up like that?  That doesn't make you angry?"

Tony vents his exasperation, and now you have to suffer Alpha irritation in stereo, turning your nose into Pepper's shoulder as you crouch there on the stairs together, smelling comfort under the notes of fabric softener and cocoa.  

"Of course this is a shitty thing that we've discovered, tonight," Tony admits, quietly, and chews his next words over for a beat, toeing some debris over the edge of a stair, hands in pockets.  "But sometimes, you know, protecting others means making a sacrifice. Isn't that what you always say? Cap?" He serves a hand out into the air.  "And Houston happened to have sacrificed a lot to keep the Earth safe, including his only kid - and that kid is here with us, now, and Houston is with SHIELD, and they're done.  It's over.  They don't have to hide away in the munitions locker that housed them, anymore." 

"Houston's only whatnow," you croak against Pepper's warm neck, the question mirrored in Steve's scowling eyebrows. You knew what those genetic reports had implied, but Bro had only been fifteen when you had fallen to the earth, and on a 1-10 'asexual genius' scale he ranked a fucking Tesla besides. You weren't Bro's 'kid'; you weren't anybody's kid.

Evenly, Tony ignores your argument.  "D is here, now.  He's here with us, and no, that doesn't make me angry.  That's what you need to address  _right now,_ Steve, alright?  Because Dave is here, in front of us, but you're mad about it like he's the one who put himself in solitary most his life; do you see why that's - do you see the part where you're in the wrong, right now?"  He loosens his fist from his pocket, shakes the tension out, a force of calm, collected Alpha superiority in the middle of all that chaos. "And I can't even enjoy telling you so, man, c'mon."

"Right," Rogers says, head dipped in a nod, still visibly working over the implication that you 'belonged' to Brodie in a manner more significant than as a student or ward or pseudo-sibling.  He considers left of the middle distance, then, "I can't be what you need me to be, right now.  So I'll help you carry Dave to medical, but I can't -" he mops his face, exhales hard, drifts a little nearer.  "He needs a tranquilizer and a professional support Ace, Tony, not my approval."

Everything on, in or around you is cold and numb - your bare feet gripping your sandals on, your blood-wet clothes, the stairs under your ass and hip, your complete departure from reality.  You want Steve's approval.

You do.

Maybe you don't  _need_ that approval, not the way you need a tranq and professional help, but, of all the night's disasters, disappointing Steve had topped the chart; because Brodie's return was mysteriously banked on the safety of your allegiance to the Avengers, or something, somehow.

"I feel weird," you mumble, the starter notes to making your excuses, which would eventually become apologies, 'cos mama didn't raise no chicken.

"I bet," Tony answers just as quietly, the dark intelligence in his eyes making room for relief.

"I need to go home," you blurt, breathless, and lean hard into Pepper's willowy frame to start to try and climb to your feet.  It's not what you mean to say, and you're a little confused why you said it.  "Back to Texas."  You shake your head, no - no, you need to stay here and make good on Bro's instructions, arguing with yourself, with the severe stab of your primal needs.  _I need home,_ you hear yourself say, feel your arms wrap around your middle, uncharacteristically protective.  You repeat yourself, clearly, urgently.  You need your room and your apartment and your rooftop; you need your kitchen and your wok and your _bed._

That's not what you want to say, but your mouth isn't listening (when does it ever), and to your continued dismay Tony's comprehension shares surprise with Pepper's sudden grip around your waist - an answer to a mystery that you don't even know is afoot, like you didn't know you were feral but apparently had been most of your life?  So there is this fresh new -something- that you probably aren't going to believe even if they told you, which helps dry you up, slows your babble.

"Okay," Pepper assures, sharing Tony's relief, and tugs you up the mezzanine to the glitter of the shattered hall, pulling each step forward out of you, insistent.  She smells good, you notice distantly; but in an alien, professional lady sort of way, quite unlike the run of ridiculous publishing Betas that had sofar made up your social life.  You imagine Rose might smell like Pepper, somehow, but in her own high, cold, removed Alpha way, and you very fiercely want your Rose, too, want the calm monotone of her laptop lectures and the impenetrable logic of her personal advice.

More than any of the things you want, you think you want John the most.  Or, you want to be the person John makes you when you're around him, returned of your cool, mythical in your artistry, controlled in your thoughts and deeds. You never had a fit in front of John, because why would you? John lived in the suburbs, in the daylight, above ground. He had a nice house and a dad who loved him, and there was no distress in his life. He was your refuge, or maybe your vacation spot, the figurehead of peace, somehow pure in his ignorance, and in his eyes were you made indestructible.

Pepper squeezes you again, pats your hip as Tony catches up with you, Steve a few steps behind. You're still saying shit out loud, filter obliterated.  While you're at it, you casually mention that your robots really did try to take a hit out on Captain Rogers, and could Anthony recover the code to confirm that, please? "Yes," Pepper answers for her husband, laughter tinting her voice as you skirt fallen glass.

You don't know what's funny or relieving or okay now about any of this, and are goddamn mystified.  This is goddamn mystifying.  Everything was so tense and awful, and now it's just... fine?  You've only ever dealt with Beta interventionists in your DJ gigs, and again those never came anywhere close to this level of personal catastrophe. Pepper's relief just doesn't track, however welcome.

The joint smells like flame suppressant and wet carpet and charred metal; Pepper walks you past the blast site and on toward the hall to the master bedroom. You stumble out of your tsinelas as the bedroom lights rise dim on automatic, catch Tony's offered elbow as the bedroom door drifts softly shut after the three of you.

"Quick question though what the fuck," you babble, hearing but not hearing yourself muffled by your shirt as Pepper stalls you both by a closet big enough to sleep the Dallas Lions.

Pepper folds your bloody t-shirt over the back of a leather chaise and tugs a silk button-up off of a hanger, then reconsiders because there was no way her shit was going to fit you in the shoulders.  "You've rarely been this far from home, right?"  she gently presses, holding up one of Tony's pyjama shirts, finding it lacking for length. "For so long? For your seasons?"

Your panic stalls out.  Refreshes itself, a different note. Tony drifts past to their attached bathroom, light and the pattering start of a bath falling from that doorway.

"I got a shot," you croak, dumb, and start to shiver.  "Miss Potts, I... I got the shot tonight."

Tony, arms crossed as he leans against the bathroom doorway, answers, "Might have been too close to count.  The good news is, you're excused from feral indictment if your symptoms show during a cycle."

Pepper adds, clinically, "You've been caught out far away from home, without any long-term relationships or stabilizing partners, and the added stress of that explosion could have tipped you right on over the edge." 

You are also unawares of the truth of your own condition re: redneck pregnit with the baby of your brother-daddy so excuse you while you vomit from sheer and unrelenting relief, and you actually do vomit; you drop to your knees and make a chili-coffee picasso in the nearest potted bamboo, since you're nearing the start of your second trimester and can't stand strong smells (like flame retardant) in the morning.

And your aggro could otherwise be summed up by the (assumed) Heat cycle, as could everyone else make sense of Steve's uncharacteristic departure from calm, his untoward outburst of freeform anxiety and outrage.  Yes, your situation was pretty goddamn ghastly, you can see that now, but no Steve probably wouldn't have flipped his lid so gracelessly unless some sorta pheromonal shenanigans were at play.

You're relieved too, now, and not just for the quick vom; answers, even horrible answers, were always better than the uncertainty of The Unknown.  "'M not on schedule," you argue of nobody, the situation maybe, sitting back on your heels to wipe your chin.

"Schedules tend to derail when joining a new House.  Here," Pepper matches your kneel at the potted bamboo, offers a glass of water from the bedside table.  "That was scary, tonight, wasn't it?"

You rinse your mouth with water, spit into the lost cause that is the bamboo pot before attempting a timid swallow past your raw throat.  "I'd honestly call it a Tuesday."

Pepper's kindness turns light, wry.  "But your brother isn't here, and you called out for him."

Shit.  Leave it to the lady who knew what _ikebani_ was to also know the _aniki_ you let slip. "Guess I'm feelin' an unusual amount of out of sorts. Won't happen again."

"It's okay if it happens again, Dave. You've," Pepper shifts her weight, gets comfortable on the floor, legs crossed lotus, Beta disaffection gleaned from a very recent experience with explosions in homesteads.  "You've recovered remarkably fast from this; it isn't your first episode, is it?"

You twitch. "Yeah.  So."  Steve already called it - undocumented, chronic.

Pepper advances to her point carefully, lightly wringing her bare ankle.  "So... I suppose I should ask, what's different about this time?  You got a little sick, right?  And you need to gather your House, your old familiar House I mean, your brother - and you need to nest? Has that ever been your, um, I mean have you ever felt this way, specifically, during a fit before? Or a Heat?"

You search your memory, eyes rolling sidelong in a momentary spike of anxiety.  "I uh, I dunno - no, I guess?  Never _wasn't_ at home, livin' the usual." You mop the back of your neck, grammar shatter-shot and accent thick.  "When it was a panic attack, 'n that.  They never got bad, really, didn't ever knock me into Heat." The fiction your Auction had spun is such a fucking mire to navigate, and you have to ford its murky waters while sticking to any helpful paths of truth because, jesus shit, you don't want to _suffer._

Tony shifts in the doorway, resettling the cross of his arms, what rest had restored under his eyes now hollowed out of his cheeks, stress evident. "Great. Perfect. See, Pep? He's fine. This is fine. We're all fine. We can all go back to being okay and fine, since we know what this is now."

Pepper closes her eyes, chews the inside of her cheek, shakes her head once. "This isn't 'fine', Tony." She unfolds to a stand, hand swinging down to offer you help up. "But we don't need to send you to a medical office, Dave, if you don't want to go. It's obvious you're skilled at reigning it in, and that's good, but -"

"But what," Tony interrupts mulishly while you take hold of Pepper's hand, and you marvel a bit at the strength of her pull, forgetting that you're relatively lightweight. "He's fine, he's been fine; he did fine under Houston and he'll do more than fine with us. You know I should have been thrown in psych half a dozen times before I even made it to college, Pepper, come on. Don't be that guy."

You take a swig of water to swallow wholesale in the hopes it might burn the idiocy threatening to spring out of your vocal cords, because you can feel all kinds of hells of prejudice against rich assholes what ain't ever been held accountable to Feral - not with Brodie suffering the way he had, indentured the way he'd been, nobody's money to keep his head above water, no pair of loving folks to lie for his sake. Brodie wasn't ever Feral, at least to your knowledge, even though he had every right to be and here these jokers were tossing their anger around like no pair of witnessing eyes would ever hold them in contempt for it.

Pepper nods, exhaling evenly.  She settles her hand on your forearm, slim fingers cool and dry in their soothe.  "If you've been removed from the stability of your House, then we might have an excuse they can put in your medical file," she trails off, letting the stunned engine of your thoughts draw the conclusion.  Your usual system of suppression was missing, so you'd lost control. No need to write you off the field; no loss to Earth's Avenging army, not to that paperwork, no.  Pepper pats the back of your elbow.

"I'd rather not go to medical," you volunteer softly, like that was even ever a choice.  Brodie's instructions were to marry Rogers, and even though you more than suspect Brodie's end goal is highly fuckdamn political by now, defensive to his capture or offensive to some unknown pursuit; you still need to see him. Maybe even more than ever, pregnancy and psuedo-heat playing unfair cards against your logic.

So you give it up, forfeit the option, the bleached sheets, the fluffy recliner bed, the several drugs in both liquid IV and pill form, all the jell-o a man could fit inside of him, and the soothing mechanical background hum of a hospice wing.  You really goddamn looked forward to all of that, and fuck Bro twice for ever denying you opiates, goddamn - having had a taste of real painkillers at HGH you absolutely can't wait to meet that numb oblivion again, but no.

You sway a bit, lean your hip into Pepper's on your guided way to the bathroom. "Not that I wanna obligate Rogers into anything, but Imma ask you, as like the guy in charge? Of this whole deal?"

Tony's regard darkens, forehead tipped forward to watch Pepper help hobble you through the bathroom door. "I think he's already said as much as no, but -" his mouth hangs open, fighting some invisible word as he follows you two in, hovers in the doorway. "Ehh. I've been wrong to assume, before." He mumbles something you almost don't catch - "Unless you're _sure_ you don't want to ask anyone else, first."

Pepper snorts, helps lean you into the vanity countertop. "Like who."

Tony makes a wounded noise, but doesn't finish the joke - maybe for fear you'll say yes, maybe for fear that Bro really had taken a hit on Rogers and he'd rather you were there to prevent any future incineration, who knows.

Pepper, blessedly, helps you into the running bath without being asked - it'll take some heavy-duty scrubbage to get all this flame repellant out of your hair and right now you have all the upper-body strength of a fart.

Stark turns from his hawkish brood over the scene once your boxers fall, swallowing against the lump in his throat, head stuffed up by unanswered Megan signal. He closes the bathroom door carefully after himself to shut you and Pepper in the light and heat, drifts through the bedroom and out past the hall to inspect the damaged suite, wreckage studied, incident rehashed with holograph footage.

Vision appears through the lopsided crater of the elevator cabin, Wanda in from the stairwell, reporting that she'd radio'd Natalie all was well but there had been a workshop explosion (to nobody's surprise - Tony's experiments were fairly volatile even on a good day). Steve hovers between the bedroom hall and workshop hall, FRIDAY slowly replaying the footage of your strife, all that grace and speed wasted against the unforgiving metal of a muderbot.

You were right, the robot had been acting with clear intent since the bower. The only question was, who was at the controls? Not Broderick himself, not if the thing directly attacked you as well? Maybe this threat - this overtaking of the robots - maybe that's something Brodie was trying to keep you safe from, by handing you over to the Avengers. You certainly would have suffered a painful disabling if Tony's automated suit hadn't intervened.

Tony bursts a sudden bustle waving the holograph footage away. "Do you want to take care of this kid?" he asks Wanda, flagging her over. "He's your age, he's tall, he needs your -" he waves around the side of his head, "Perfect Ace command of all things mental chill. C'mon; he's cute, you're cute, it'll be cute." He jerks his chin, grin lopsided. "At least until you spawn the anitchrist."

Wanda doesn't dignify this with an answer, just strolls to the workshop hall to further investigate the damage, waving over her shoulder, dismissive. Tony knows her investment in you, or can guess at it - Pietrov had been a speedster, after all, a tall-ish white-haired kid the same, and you might forever register under that 'brother' slot, no matter that Pietrov had been Beta.

Tony snaps his fingers. "V," he wheedles, hand serving the air. "Literally never had a 'Meg a day in your life, and hey -"

"I thought David was brought in for the Captain," Vision interrupts laconically, guileless. "Has the plan been changed?" To Steve, concerned curiosity, "Did David reject your advances, Captain Rogers?"

Tony snorts.

Steve braces his hands on his hips, eyeballing the soaked couch. "In a word, yes."

Tony looks twice. "What. Really. No," he drawls, then squints. "No. He's asking for you - you said no, remember? I'm trying to rustle someone else up to take care of this, because we really can't see this kid into medical, because medical will call Dave Feral and Dave needs to stay field-worthy if he wants to do us any good. If he wants to do _the world_ any good. You remember the world, don't you Steve? Only planet we've got? Under new and exciting extra-terrestrial threat, lately? Think we don't deserve a God who can make his stand against that Asgardian lunatic, Severus Snape himself?"

"All right," Steve says. "Yes, we need Dave legally enrolled on the field. But I'm not going to take advantage of someone in duress, Anthony, and we both heard Dave back me off -"

Tony claps, dipping a knee as if to plead with heaven. "Because you smell like a faceful of getting punched, Steve, _work with me here."_ He opens his arms, beseeching. "He asked. I don't know how else to - I mean I'm not lying about that. His exact words -" His face lights up, inspired. "FRIDAY, play back yesterday afternoon, 17:36:56."

The exact time-stamp of the request is a startling reminder of Tony Stark's INCREDIBLE BRAINPOWER, and Steve almost doesn't catch on to the words in that holograph scene being recited, but it's you saying you thought Steve was a babe, and therefore not easy to talk to. Your recording image mops the back of its neck, visibly conflicted as you confesses being off your game, that your previous partners were all Texan; and the footage follows you into the elevator that would take you and Tony to dinner, where Tony asks, in all sincerity, if you accepted the matrimony mission Brodie had set you down on, for the Ace Brodie had specifically told you to expect - or if you were just following orders, like a good southern 'Meg.

"Brodie let him know at the start what he'd be showing up to do," Tony admits as holo-Dave blusters on camera. "Given his options at the end of that State contract, pal, you were always his best bet. _We_ were always the best choice."

Steve only crosses his arms, considers the burn radius circled out from the elevator in the white carpet. "He did a good job pretending ignorance, then."

"I'm not going to _obligate_ you," Tony quietly concludes, swiping the footage down and away. "And neither is Dave. But if you want to help us out, even if it's just this once? Then it's go time. Otherwise, I don't know. I'll ask Barton to reprise his Professional Support role with another killer Meg; I'm sure he'll be thrilled." Tony bows like he's going to leave.

Steve is caught out like a deer in the headlights. "Dave needs stability," he insists, "He needs routine, a return to a norm. Not some new Ace laying hands on when he doesn't want it."

Exasperated anew, Tony whisper-shouts, _"What the hell_ makes you think Dave doesn't want it?"

Steve, to his credit or to his handicap, can tell there's a tension to your scent that doesn't flag like consent. It's stress, and fear, and a longing for someone who isn't there, someone recent your body is calling to, a throw-away partner or long-standing affair. Steve doesn't have the words for this, product of his generation, so he only says, "Well he physically turns his back on me, for a start."

Anthony seizes fistfuls of his hair, laughing three short barks of incredulity. "That's a goddamn 5-star cheesecake presentation move, _you literal walnut."_

Doubt descends into the line of Steve's shoulders, and he sits despite the wet of the couch. "That doesn't negate what all-else Dave actually needs, Tony." Quieter, "Don't be shallow."

Tony shrugs, hands in pockets, gloating just a little. "So we give him what he's used to. A shitty little apartment alone with a gigantic social pariah."

Steve blinks. "I'm not a pariah, and we would have killed for apartments as nice as mine in the thirties."

* * *

PEPPER ~~POTTS~~ STARK, meanwhile, is sitting on the edge of the tub, her pyjama flannels rolled up to her knees, feet in the water so you can lean back into her help, her thin fingers digging gently against your scalp. "We might need to get some dish soap," she muses, plucking a crumb of greasy chemical foam down a clump of your hair, the shampoo thick and aggressively cologned.

You grunt a dazed affirmative, knees pulled up to spare her the sight of your boner, still real unused to all the friendliness from your new Pack - which was Your Problem entirely, because Megs were public goddamn domain and grew up Having Issues if they weren't cuddled 18 of the 24 hours in a day. Brodie only ever barely tolerated your cuddling, and only after he knew you was 'Meg and all, and you're only afraid you're sick or dying, because of the psuedo-Heat and all the extra attention to which you aren't goddamn accustom.

"Do you like Steve?" Pepper asks out of nowhere, casually like she's asking if you like pumpkin pie.

You don't know Steve. You shrug your shoulder. "I like the way he smells." You hate the way he smells like anger, you hate the way he _doesn't goddamn respond to you._ But you could marry him, sure, easy. Weasel your way in somehow, mission accomplished, win Brodie back in your life even if it was 'just' as your brother - your pregnancy only craved the support, the proximity, starved for a familiar voice, familiar hold, familiar salt in the air.

"I'll sneak you down the back stairs if you really would rather go to medical," Pepper assures, probably scenting your discomfort, apprehension, seeing right through your bravado with all the practice from marrying who she had.

You crouch forward in the water and then slide back to dunk your hair, reaching up to scrub, a flurry of motion because your guts ache and you'd rather be anywhere but the midst of these lies. You resurface into the embrace of a towel, Pepper lending her shoulder to help you hobble-stand with a sluicing cascade of hot water. "Cos Steve said 'no', huh," and they didn't want to bother anyone else with you, failed temptation that you were.

"I don't know," Pepper says, soft. She shakes one foot at a time as she steps out of the tub, coaxes you out and you sink back down to a crouch on the cool tile floor, because your insides are on goddamn fire. Pepper rubs your back through the towel, low and firm. "I don't know that he did say no, D. He was backing Tony off pretty adamantly when we showed up; that doesn't feel like 'no' to me."

You nod, piled on with another towel so Pepper can ruffle your hair dry. "I don't want a stranger touchin' up on me," you say, following some invisible line of truth. "That's what happens in medical, ain't it? A set of strangers, one there t'observe cos the other ain't supposed to mount? I don't want that."

Pepper hums. "Have you been to an office before? After Tim, maybe?"

You exhale hard. "Once," you lie, so easy. "Didn't stay; skeeved me right on out," then, a garnish, "Easier, somehow, just doin' the do with a living, breathing someone. Even if you don't know 'em well, you at least know they _want_ you. That it ain't some assignment." But that part's true, that part is so true you're a little mystified why you never did step out on Brodie, John notwithstanding. And, the finishing touch, "I reckon I want Steve. That it ain't an assignment. I'm keen on why Anthony asked we do this covert, like, 'cos hell, Miss Potts, I don't want Steve feelin' no sorta way _assigned_ to me either, you know?"

Pepper perches on the side of the tub, the heels of her palms braced on her knees. "I think Steve only operates in assignments. I think that's just fundamentally who he is - and that's not a bad thing, necessarily, even if it comes off a little unfeeling. He only warmed to Tony once he knew they shared the same goal, the same overall life-mission, of a sorts." She chuckles, pulls a heel up to the tub edge to rest her cheek on her knee. "Steve has a reputation for being a bit stuffed-up, but that's just his single-mindedness showing in times of emergency, of which we've had in surplus since they thawed the poor man out."

"Emergency like the bot explosion, too?" you slur from the floor, your own cheek resting on your own knee, hair nearly transparent in it's wet, dripping cooled water on the top of your foot. "Emergency like a quartered 'Megan on a Break? No enemies to fight?"

Pepper nods, eyes sparkling with some distant reward. "A new relationship isn't going to change the way Steve processes life and living - but it will give him something different to focus on, even if he has to simplify it down to a set of goals. Tony's the same way, which is most likely the reason why they don't get along."

"Because they build goal profiles on the persona, not the person," you supply, nodding. Similarly, Brodie got along with nearly everyone, but absolutely nobody got along with Brodie - because Brodie built the goal profiles of his actions around _who those other people really were,_ earning their admiration, but other people couldn't pin a persona on Bro, so they built their goals on bullshit assumptions catered to their own subjective realities, disappointing him.

You continue, having stunned Pepper with the insight. "Tony's public persona is kind of a terrible person, and Steve's is also kind of terrible in a different way. I'd hate 'em both, too, if I honestly thought that either was genuine, right? The bourgeois playboy berk and the poster monk for imperialistic overreach? Tch."

Pepper laughs, a bright, soothing Beta chuckle. "And you are so like Tony sometimes I'm half afraid it's another strike against you, but your _persona,_ public or otherwise, isn't half as obnoxious."

You laugh too, quiet and breathy, more a show of teeth because it hurts to be alive right now.

Delirium creeps softly in as you dress, Pepper's capris and baggy sleeping T fit near perfectly to your frame (hashtag newbestfriend).  The world is wobbly and sharp at the edges, and the soggy sittingroom is empty but for Vision and FRIDAY's lasers scanning the damage of the blast site, planning for tomorrow's repairs.

You follow the bob of Pepper's ginger ponytail with single-minded effort to block out the pain cramping up from your balls to the back of your lungs, stepping woodenly into the dry cold of the service stairwell to wince your way down to the ground floor -

but you don't take the flat windowless metal slab of a door back in to ground lobby, and feverishly claw your damp hair out of your eyes as the security lock for a much bigger set of double doors is palmed greenlit -

and Steve, whole and hale and reset by a shower in the time it had taken you and Pepper to get this far, is waiting in jacket and jeans under the side exit of the building with a fffucking -

duffel bag -

and the - haha - oh man, and the glass in the bottom of your shoes makes this conversational squeak against the cement of the driveway you've all shuffled out onto and 

Pepper ~~aopolies apoalgises apollogei~~

you forget how to spell apologizes

Pepper, at your elbow, rubs your bare arm as if to warm you.  Steve, like he's unpacking a weapon, pulls a sweater from his duffel, NYU in big faded letters under the hard wash of the driveway lighting, the morning outside still deep with night.

Natalie arrives with your bag, tosses your 'Dex at your face (which Steve catches, because you haven't even pulled your arms through the sweater and can only make big stupid moony eyes out at everyone present). Your thoughts gormlessly quest after medical as if the hospital could be waiting for you inside the Limo that just rolled up from the yawning dark of the grounds, but you know you already turned that option down and

Steve, to his credit, tucks your 'Dex under his sweater into the pocket of Pepper's capris, securing your weapon close to you.  This is done with good intent and positive result - a little bit of yourself returns through the swim of your delerium, but it's the part that can actually process information and ask questions and sabotage its own dignity and shit.  Your guts hurt - not nearly as badly as Dear Sweet Hilde's guts had hurt, but, still.  Uncomfortable.

"Uh," you croak, stalling out at the limo door.  "Wait."  You shuffle your arms through Steve's hoodie at last.  

"I'll explain on the way," Steve gruffs, and your throat goes dry while your tongue builds wet, and you ache all down the inside of your legs in a way that isn't as much fun as it used to be, not unlike the dull throb of broken bones.

'Where are my shades', you mean to say.  "Can Natalie come," you say instead, some hind process of your brain well aware you were Going Somewhere Else and that you wanted your no-nonsense murderbabe to accompany.

Steve glances hopefully Natalie's way while Tony opens the limo door for you.

"I'll come visit," Nat says, reaching forward to rub your arm the way Pepper had, bunching the sweater to squeeze your bicep.

But you knew what 'visit' means, because you've promised as much to John - infrequent arrivals of intense but brittle reunions breaking up long silences, just another abandonment in all but name.

"You're coming back here," Pepper argues with your waft of dismay.  "Dave, you're coming back.  As soon as you feel ready."

You deflate, you just crumple backward to a hard sit into the limo, lungs wheezing out your relief.  You're not being banished, you didn't fail mission. Tony tucks your legs up, pats your knee before closing the door, shutting you in the dark cold, the dusty burn of the cabin heat vents prickling your nose while muffled voices bicker low outside.  You shut your eyes, jaw spasming into a clench.

The door opposite your curl clicks open.  The limo dips with added weight.  The trunk slams shut, the door follows, stilling the cool wind that had drifted in with Captain Rogers.

The car tugs forward, glides soundlessly down the long drive of the complex property, carrying you in your pocket of dark, your curled corpus stiff with pain and damp with sweat.

"Sound profiles," you mumble, clear your throat, tilt your head back to watch Steve watch you through the gloom of the passing streetlights - and Steve is heart-clenchingly beautiful in this light, and that's probably not even just your hormones talking, goddamn.  "Generational divides between the genres in music.  'S because of sound profiling, white noise, environmental uh," you cough, turn to face the plush leather back of the limo seating, spare your mortification.  "Environment.  What you grow up hearing."  You wave your hand, a lazy affectation through the pain crawling up behind your jaw.  "Construction equipment changes.  Cars change.  Appliances, media, city acoustics.  Everything that can make noise in your life is going to change, from generation to generation, especially technology.  'S why classical had all that awkward brass, nobody does brass anymore, not unless it's stadium; because nobody really has to listen to music outside, with enough room for the whole damn orchestra to gather."

Steve takes a beat to consider that, and the burr of his voice is quiet in the dim cabin.  "Suburban sprawl preceded the biggest changes to contemporary music since the invention of the record.  America only became the media giant it is now after the war - music and film had a lot more space to stretch their legs over here, unstymied by the rebuilding efforts taking up much of Europe's time and resources."  He scoffs, bitterness flavoring the air.  "And now there are songs that use machine gun fire like lyrics.  Sound profiling, huh."

You hum, inch up a little closer, drag your torso into Steve's open lap - which isn't what you mean to do, but whatever, the heat of the nearest Alpha eases your galloping distress so you'll take whatever liberties you can.  "Country and folk genres tend to have noticeable differences from the more regionally popular, because of their environment," you continue laconically, trying to find a comfortable spot for your ribs on Steve's hard thighs, fingers that have been permanently half-curled by a lifetime of sword training now affixed in the open zipper of Steve's jacket.

"Good news is, the countryside doesn't tend to change its soundtrack very drastically over generations, so if you liked, say, folk songs in the 40s? You'll probably like folk songs now.  They make a whole gig out of using original acoustic and analog, too, it's a trip."  Your voice cracks, straining up with another wave of gut cramps and you tuck your arms tighter down against your stomach, teeth chattering.  "I see you fer a Fleetwood Mac kind of guy."

The heat of Steve's hand hovers over your shoulder, down your arm, passing back up to settle against the side of your neck, a light touch you almost wish wasn't even there, for all the sting of its hesitation.  "Let's say what I liked was what eventually became Rock'n'Roll, though I wasn't around for all the politics that went into shaping the separate genres.  We only had the difference between instrumental and what was considered 'stage music', in my time.  You do this for a dayjob, right?  Professional musician?"

You grunt a 'yeah', shoulder hitching up in a shrug, quietly marveling that Steve had kept pace with the lecture, that environmental sound profiling was something that he paid attention to, had an interest in.  "You probably wouldn't like any of what I do," you amend, "I remix speculatively, test the boundaries of the sound profiles most people grew up with, _are_ growing up with.  Wouldn't match what you're used to; doesn't match what anybody's used to."

"Music for the future,"  Steve offers, generously.  "The future is now."

"The human brain is addicted to new input," you say, and it's working, the conversation is taking your mind off your clawing discomfort.  "So it's the _new_ that sells.  Which is why it's so much easier to divorce the younger generations from their entertainment dollars.  Nothing's actually ever 'new' new, it all just gets remixed to suit the sociological climate of the times - books, music, theater.  But to the young, it's all new.  All of it."

Steve hums, more comfortably settles his weight and drapes his arm over the back of the seating.  "So older generations, they see the patterns?"

"And complain about all the 'rip-offs', ironically unawares that their media favorites were also ripping something else off before their time." You yawn, jaw clicking. "But sound profiles, man, those are unique, regionally and generationally, and whatever."

Steve scratches lightly through your hair, and Pepper was right - you needed what you were used to, you needed quiet isolation; you feel your tensions unravel in degrees, satellite irritation with Rogers winding down, snuffing out. It still doesn't explain why you've been boarded into a car, but.  Steve flinches, tugs his vibrating phone out of his jacket, and the roomy cabin of the limo brightens with dim blue screenlight. You squint up at Steve, and squawk softly as the heavy warmth of his hand covers your eyes.

"Try to get some rest," Steve says, thumbing out a text.

"Mnh, I was kinda owed an explanation, here," you croak, and drape your arm out to fish a bottle of water from the nearby refreshment bar.

Steve sends a reply text, darkens his phone. Exhales. "In so many words, we're trying to preserve your field status. We've already pushed more than a few buttons operating outside of international jurisdiction earlier this year - and your skillset is too valuable to our cause to lose to some red tape PR parade." He shifts under you, settles your weight a little closer, slouching more comfortably back. "I probably don't have to tell you, Omegan ferality is not a lawful offense, except maybe for the Pack who would let it get as bad as -" frustration clips his statement short, lends a growl to his scoff.

You slide yourself away in a sudden fidget, drop gracelessly from Steve's lap to the floor of the cabin, hip and shoulder digging into shallow carpet, arms draped lax in front of you, one hand curled beside Steve's boot to pluck lint off his laces.  Submission measures itself in height - and the order went standing, bowing, crouching, kneeling, sitting and then laying prone; and it suits you just fine to get your lazy ass groundwards at the earliest suggestion of conflict.

"Sorry," Steve amends, though the anger isn't gone from his scent and you're a little professionally worried about that, beyond your initial urges of self-preservation. "My point is, that's our risk to take. You did fine under Houston, and we're hoping you'll do better than fine with us; so we keep you out of the psych ward and you keep us out of the papers. Deal?"

"Deal," you rasp, stomach hollowed out at the realization of your position, that this was more or less a public gig and your actions were more liable to crowd scrutiny, would impact your team.  If you ever went a little sideways under ground, nobody was there to witness but Brodie and a few carefully uninvolved researchers.  If you ever went a little sideways in the Avengers, the world would be watching.

Steve wags the foot under your plucking fidget.  "Do you want to get back up from the floor?"

"I'm cool."

"Dave."

You wait.

"...Dave?"

You clear your throat. "Hanh?"

",Boned fish' doesn't really do it for me. I'm not that kind of fella."

This works.  You snort a half-laugh, wince from the pain of that, push yourself to your elbows, fall over on your back instead, take a swig of water. "Man." You cough, wipe your mouth.  "This is far from my normal, trust it.  I am wigging out, is all.  All the wigs are out. Consider me out-wigged."  You wave the water bottle up, a surrender to Brodie's fictional narrative on your sexual habits.  "With the exception of an onslaught of robot-induced anxieties, man, I'm usually good for it." You could be casual about this. You could pretend you fucked strangers all the time. Sure.

"I'll," Steve searches his words. "Try. To comport myself better. Tony's right, I've been in my own head a little too long, and my social grace has suffered for it."

You puzzle over the flat of your chest. "You don't have a Beta?"

Steve shrugs, curls forward out of his seat, and with all the easy grace despite his size joins you on the floor, shoulder to shoulder. His exhale as his head meets the carpet is a storied expression on three different flavors of exhaustion. "Sam will stop in later today. He's a Modernist, so, he thinks we need space to figure it out for ourselves, first."

You scoff. "Harsh."

Steve shrugs, an oddly young concession. "He's never been wrong. Do you have a Beta?"

"Urgh." Caught. "Yes and no. My production team. Nothing I'd consider Household."

Dryly, "You want mine?"

The grin lifts just under your eyes, and no further. "Only if -" but you stop mid-joke, unsure if the whole marriage deal was even still on the table. "Mh. Nevermind." You curl onto your side, away from Steve, exposing your back like all the magazines suggest you do. Shut in this closed circuit with just the two of you in the air, you've considerably calmed, but. "Where are we going."

Steve watches your back with all the stoic removal of the perpetually unsurprised. "I have an apartment in Brooklyn."

You peer over your shoulder, wide-eyed, hugging the water to your chest with the loud crackle of its plastic. "Wait, so are we married?" Shit. You're supposed to be cool about this, it's supposed to be a victory. _Fuck._

Steve blinks, and does not laugh at all. "Would you prefer that?" he hedges, eyes narrowed up at the ceiling.

What would an independent, metropolitan, free-wheeling sexpot say? You have no idea. Shit. _Shit._ "No, I - no, that's fine, that's cool." The water bottle crackles. "I mean yeah I'd 'prefer' to-" your breath catches, a sore well of emotion choking you out. You want to belong to someone again - you've never _not_ belonged to Brodie, never been left so far out of his reach, and even in your plans to get out with John and whatever Ace he could land, you always assumed you'd still technically belong to Houston. In the desperation of Bro's sudden absence you want to belong to the next Alpha who will have you, actually, which feels disingenuous to Steve as like a person or individual or whatever, hhh. But you want help against the mystery of Bro's departure; you want an Alpha on your side because you want an Alpha on Brodie's side, now, too.

"Prefer to what?" Steve prompts softly, sour metallic defense from earlier slowly mellowing back to apple field and warm cotton.

You shrug. "I'm just on the usual 'Meg bullshit, is all. If you ain't up for 'an mawwiage', there's not much I can do to change yer mind," your voice dips, a rasping strain, "Since Tony doesn't want you actin' outta obligation, or a sense of duty or whatever, and you're not the only eligible bachelorino in the Pack or on the team or whatever who could? Do the thing?" You roll your hand on your wrist. "Bite that bullet. With me."

The info takes its time to thicken the air. Your stomach lurches as the limo takes a turn off an exit ramp, water bottle cool against the inside of your wrist, tucked down the sleeve of Steve's hoodie to occupy your aimless fidget.

Steve pauses several times as if to speak, aborts with a soft punch of air from the back of his throat. He never considered that you might have traditional Megan goals, that you wanted to marry and have a litter, wanted a Household to manage.  Finally, when the lights outside the limo's tinted windows have gone sharply metropolitan in color and frequency, "Anthony tends to impose his own value system on the people around him. We're working on that, but in the meanwhile let's make the effort to go ahead and ignore his advice."

The frown tears you up from the inside out, a deep and ugly wound. "Wouldn't obligate you on my own merits, neither. Fuck."

Steve curls forward to a sit, scratching the back of his neck. "You and Tony might both think that 'duty' is a dirty word, but that just happens to be the value by which I've lived my entire life. Duty to my family, my community, my friends and classmates. Duty to my country, to my planet, to defend the weak and help correct any abuses by the powers that be." He exhales. "If it's my _duty_ to my Pack to marry you, Dave, then I'm going to marry you. And I'm sorry if you don't like that, but it's too great a risk to Earth's safety to leave you unaffiliated and I frankly wouldn't trust your keeping to Stark - for maybe not immediately obvious reasons, but -" Another labored inhale. Steve's fingers rasp against each other, brushing away invisible crumbs. "But that's what I _prefer,_ and it's only an obligation insofar as decent people are obligated to, what, to actually act _in decency._ I don't aim to _jail_ you, but I'd be the bad guy if I left you vulnerable to someone else's jailing, right?"

"Wull yeah, okay," you mull, a pinch of a cackle souring your volume. "Don't let me stand in the way of you patting yourself on the back for this. Fuck."

Steve does laugh, a low sardonic chuckle. "I'm pretty sure Anthony's told me that, too, in so many words. Like the worst thing I could have ever done was to _gladly_ help him out."  He levels with you, sympathy in the line of his mouth. 

But that was what you wanted, wasn't it?  An in, a guaranteed enrollment, a contract, a promise to belong somewhere.  Mission accomplished, whatever fuckery Brodie was at, captured or blackmailed or just playing a really dangerous long-game.  The physical pain of your current condition wasn't entirely out of place, even, because you were well used to paying that price.  Could have done without the gaping chasm of dread opened up below your lungs, but whatevs.  You shake your head, arms clamped stone around your ribs, elbow digging into the shallow limo carpet.  "I ain't disputing the favor, hoss; I know I don't wanna be left unaffiliated either."

"Noted."  Steve answers another buzz of a text, and the air goes dry with silence.

"Bad news?" You prompt from behind the chewed cap of the water bottle, and ruck your arm under your cheek for a pillow.

"Good news, actually." Steve says, and taps the phone against your shoulder.  "Sound profiles aren't the only thing that change over generations."  The heat of his bulk settles back down behind you, closer this time.  "It wasn't ever meet to just grab an Oughtie without being asked; and definitely not once they've turned their back."  But Steve does just that, tucks his arm around your middle to drag you the half a foot back against his chest, the inertia of the turning car tugging your aching guts out of their clench.

"Pretty sure back-showing has always been a Meg invitation, my guy," you huff, shivering violently from thighs to knees, clamping your legs tight against a lurching restlessness.  But what the hell did you know 'never' from 'always'? You left school at thirteen, and it wasn't like Omegan History was a public sector requisite. The fever was creeping in again, a steeper hike now that you didn't have an entire household of other people to buffer between you and Rogers.

"Not any Megs I ever knew," Steve says doubtfully, with all the confidence of a man who actually used to know some goddamn Megans, as peopled as his generation had been with them.

You turn your chin slowly to regard Steve over your shoulder, and you're looking fairly wrecked by your condition, bags under your eyes, skin drawn tight and flush.  "You can't tell me the forties were a bastion of Omegan autonomy, bossman, you just can't."

Steve's embrace firms, anchors you.  "Well, no, but I know how a subculture's previous autonomy can be written out of history in order to justify wrongs taking place in the present.  It was never okay to grab anyone unless they asked - and I'm not really sure when that changed.  Or why."

"The media boom and political paranoia of the sixties," you recite, well versed in Rose's sociological musings.  "When Megs were barred from taking up space in the Public Sector.  We lost birth control the same year we lost property rights, and individual rights under the law went gonzo in the seventies about the same time open sexuality was scared underground by the Caliphate."  Your voice skews hoarse and you tug the mouth of Steve's hoodie up over your nose as if to stifle your frustration.  It was understandable, now, why Steve was confused, hesitant.  Hell, in his time 'Megs could dance around stages in spangly underwear and buy their own Dens in the suburbs and everything.  Steve only wasn't grabbing you up because in his day grabbing up on Megs wasn't _the polite thing to do._

In Steve's time, Omegans could head their own Packs, hold down careers independent from their Alphas, and divorce on their own merits; but the history books only ever touted their contribution to American history as passive support, nurses and phone operators and temporary factory workers awaiting the day their Aces came home so they could retire back to their kitchens and herb gardens and 2.5 children.  Omegans were actually writing long mathematical codas to send missiles to their targets, and were acting heads of some of history's most groundbreaking medical and scientific research teams;  Megs in Steve's day were starting colleges and digging coal, but all the current-day articles for all the anniversaries of historical reverence put the Omegans of the past in frilly aprons and mental institutions.

"Jesus."  Steve says, an adequate oath against the merciless march of societal regression.  His weight shifts, his other arm wedges under you, wraps you up against him in a snug hold.

Your vision tunnels, darkens, capillaries blown wide under the assault of your immediate surrender.  This isn't a swoon so much as it is a total fucking K.O., and your voice actually cracks out from behind your clenched teeth, a pornographic sound.

"Hm?"  Steve grunts, nose behind your ear.  Brooklyn steeps through his accent, precision of speech traded in for emotional honesty.  "Y'okay?"

You can't answer.  The ever-tightening spiral of need tangling up your insides has reversed course in your pelvis, unwinding, spooling out, shivery pleasure fluttering through you in a shallow orgasm.  Your next attempt at words mangles itself inorganically, a glitch of noise, dial-up peeling through phone wires, teenaged voicebox crackle.

You _are_ actually a teenager, you realize, and laugh in small, painful shivers.  You're only 19 and you've never slept with any Alpha but the one who raised you, so it isn't that weird if you've never had an actual Heat.  Auction-Dave was supposed to be wily and experienced, open to a random march of new suitors.  Real Dave was a pregnant, terrified child who once thought getting his dick in his best friend made him some sorta Ace in his own right.

You hate this. You're giving Brodie's mission the old college try, and you hate it; hate losing control, hate the inconvenience you've so far posed for others, hate this weird, prolonged bout of suffering you've never before had to face down, much less face down alone.  You want your brother and his inveterate knowledge on the practical realities of Your Problems.  You want your _Alpha._ You want **your** Alpha.

"You're not okay," Steve concludes his own question, and brings the bright square of a phone in front of you both to type, to keep his hold around you.

You gamely shut your eyes so as not to eavesdrop, turn your nose into your arm, scent your wrist from under the sleeve of your borrowed sweater, self-soothing.

 _'Dave??'_ John Egbert's piping Megan incredulity glances your ear.  It hadn't been Steve's phone brought forward, but your own.

"Mmh," you try, and grasp Steve's wrist to keep your phone against your ear.  "Hhy," you croon, because ohmygod, _John._

John's stupid, cartoonishly energetic cadence pelts questions at you, and he sounds so Meg, he's so unbelievably Meg and you love him _so much -_

Steve takes pity on the confusion rising in pitch on the other line, and eases the phone up to his own ear to answer.  "Dave's fine, John, he's actually here with - uh, well we haven't met but -"  Steve pauses to let the scorn of John's relief blister through the air.  "Yes uh, no, you're right; and I'm sorry to bother you at this hour but - I'm - hm?"  Steve winces, listening carefully.

You're rapt, riding out the unusual crests of horny-hurt with held breath, straining to overhear.

"Right,"  Steve drawls, puts some distance between his face and yours to shoot you _a look._   "Sorry to hear that.  No, I really wouldn't say he's 'perfectly' fine, just - I called to -"  Steve's chest jerks, breath brushing over the side of your neck, a whispered 'wow'.  "Agent Egbert," He interrupts, removed of all the soft pander.  "Your presence is requested to the Syracuse SHIELD offices in the state of New York, at your soonest convenience, by the invitation of - yes well, I'm getting to tha--"

Steve pulls the phone from his ear.  "Christ, son," he swears softly, because Egbert wouldn't have been daunted by any sort of Governmental Officiating, not at three a.m. on a worknight.  The line goes quiet and you grunt your anxiety, grip anchored in the curve of Steve's arm, jacket squeaking under your grasp.

Bravely, cautiously, Steve returns the phone to his ear.  After a beat, "Jim," he exhales in relief.  "This is Rogers."  -  "Yeah, Maria's doing well.  I'm actually calling on behalf of Dave Strider, tonight, um - urgent, I'd say, sure."  -  "Oh hell, I don't know; General Rhodes?  Director Fury?  I can send their contact info if your branch head needs a parley, or you can make the request for Captain Rogers, that one hasn't failed me yet."

You scoff, centered now by the very idea of Egdad within reach, within hearing.  You want your Household, or whatever closest proximity to a household as you'd formed over the years, and Egbert Senior had always delivered on the paternal affection (even if you never knew what to do with that, exactly, whenever it showed up).

Steve's tone darkens.  "No, it's not a combat assignment.  Kind of a long story, actually, but Dave is here with us, now, and we'd like to - well, I would like to extend a visiting invitation to John, and to whomever John might be in claim with, at present."

There is a long, agonizing block of carefully phrased discourse too quiet to overhear, because James Egbert always speaks with deliberation and grace.

Steve's relief triggers in the air, sour to floral.  "Yeah, thank you.  Thanks.  I'll let him know." - "Oh, uh, sure."

The phone settles warm against your ear and cheek, and you mumble your name, your presence.

 _'David,'_ Egdad breathes, all worry and latenight hush.  John crabs something in the background, and you want to cry.  _'Yes and no questions now, son, are you under arrest?'_

The absurdity of that curdles mid-humor.  "No."

_'Has Broderick been placed under arrest?'_

You do cry, a little, a hiccough and the sting of despair just behind your chemical-scrubbed eyeballs.  "Unconfirmed."

_'Do you know where Broderick is?'_

The hiccough redoubles.  You grip Steve's hand over the phone, voice wavering.  "No."

_'I'm sorry to ask, but when you last knew of Broderick's whereabouts, did he yet live?'_

This isn't an unusual question. Houston didn't covet his guardianship over you so much as relentlessly warn the State that he was the only guardian qualified. It would have been Unusual, forking you over to no fanfare. You squeeze your eyes shut, take a moment to compose yourself.  "Yes."  Interrupting Egdad's next question - ",M with an Auction Bid, is all.  Bro peaced, might have been contract scalped by uh, by SHIELD."

Egdad pauses.  _'I... see.'_ Lower, kinder, because he'd know what kind of fear that uncertainty would engender.  _'I understand, Dave.  Would you like to assure John of this, before we leave for the airport?  Or would a texting do?'_

"Mmn," you deliberate, but it must have come off positive enough because John overtakes the line and _boy_ is he _pissed._

_'I've got some 'yes and no' for you too, fuckass!  Are you dead!  Are you insane!  Do you even know what time it is!'_

"No, sometimes, and I don't even know my own name right now, buddy, give me a break."

Steve's hold loosens, firms again.

_'Put that guy on, that secretary or whomever the hell - what is he, hospital staff?  Invitation, my butt!  We're coming to get you, you gigantic dink!'_

"Alpha," you correct flatly.  "New Alpha.  I'm - I'm not fine but I'm not in the hospital or jail or whatever."  The chemical notes in the cabin veer amber and savory, because Steve is a little bit proud that you're better, that the thing he did to snap you out of your next spiral actually worked, which, okay, whatever. 

 _'Gross!'_   John rages.  _'Put your gross old politician on the horn, then, so I can tell him where to stick his shitty invitation!'_

"His name is Steve," you correct, bewildered.

_'Bleaugh, what kind of a shitname is that??  That's a name for a minor character on The Office, that's how shitty it is!!'_

"Rogers," you follow up, warm in your navel at John's outrage.  You always needed your friends to clue you in on what you should be feeling, and yeah - the nature of Bro's disappearance, the abruptness of your disposal, the crash-landing into (and subsequent failure of) an arranged marriage nobody had been adequately prepared for, should have made you just as angry.  You shouldn't be some weeping Meg cast adrift on the Moors begging yourself down into feral breaks; you should be mad as hell.

John's incredulity honeys with sarcasm.  _'Wull okay, 'Steve Rogers', real original.  Lemme talk to that gross old Captain America wannabe, then.'_

"Zing."  It would have been a pretty good insult, if indeed you had wound up in the worst case scenario you and John had been preparing one another for - that Brodie might capitulate to the State under the same mysterious motivations by which he worked for General Cutter, that he really would let you off to the highest bid eventually.  To Steve, while holding the phone up for him to slide from your sweaty grip, "I don't think he knows who you are."

"I don't think it matters," Steve corrects, generously.  "I'd be upset if Natalie ever wound up similarly.  Suspicious, too."  Because Natalie was a murderbabe like you, and just as independent, and you hated the thought of her calling you up at some early hour unable to speak, jailed or hospitalized or overtaken by some opportunistic _stranger._

Steve braves the phone; "Rogers."

 _'Captain America?'_   John drawls sarcastically, loud enough for you to hear.

Steve inhales, braced.  "Speaking."

Silence rings, followed by a flurry of demands muffled down to a reasonable volume. 

"Sure," Steve answers, sympathetic, and there's a tang of Alpha interest in the cabin, probably because John sounds like a true blue Omegan undoubtedly having some sort of fit of appeal, and you can't reach that register pitch any more, not for a few years hence, you towering alien thing.  "I will keep that in mind," Steve continues, shifting to hold position against the turn of the car, its overtaking an intersection light, the world spinning beneath you. 

Steve hums his acknowledgment along to John's hurried take-down of the situation, letting him pause for breath, to backtrack, to detail. "Understandably," Steve agrees with some conclusion you can't hear, his chin brushing the top of your head.  The arm under you flexes, Steve's hand rucking up beneath the sweater to brush his thumb down your ribs, like strumming a guitar.

You grunt, fireworks sparking down your nerves, and shift forward into that grasp just to feel the pressure of the hold, legs restless in their shivering stretch.

John is winding down, gathering himself together in a professional capacity, positing deductions against his previous scorn.  Houston would trust you to the Avengers, that makes sense, what a relief! John laughs, and the music of it strums through you, another drag on the guitar of your ribcage.  The limo has been stopped for a while now, but the world is still tilting on its axis, like a boat on choppy waters, cabin doorway blocked by your brother in Rood, watching you with troubled eyebrows, nobody else around, just you and your desperation and the sea.

"Mmhm, I'll send a car to the offices for ETA," Steve concludes.  "Yeah, he's here."

The phone returns.  You rasp a non-word, eyes glued shut by the night's dehydration.

 _'You're in trouble, mister,'_   John threatens, not unkindly.  _'I have to finish school and make Agent, but by the end of the year, woo bucko, are you in for it.'_

"Well hell," you slur.  "I'll have Stark design me up some Ass Armor.  Protect me from the Egbertian whoop-all headed my way."

John chuckles, which you can feel in the root of your dick.  _'I mean it, though.  You should have let me know - you never let me know what's going on with you, Dibs; not until it reaches critical mass like this!'_

Well.  You were kind of occupied trying to keep your incestuous castle of sand upright for those last two weeks, so.  "Sorry 'bout that.  It was abrupt for everyone involved."

_'Feeling better, though, right?'_

"Loads.  You need to cuss America's figurehead out any more, or?"

_'Leave it to Dave Goddamn Strider to accidentally fall into a celebrity marriage, and flip his stupid lid about it.'_

Your vision swims.  Oh shit, that was kind of exactly your situation now, wasn't it?  See, this is why you needed your friends.  Perspective.  "See you soonish."  You grunt an interruption, correct yourself, "Or maybe not, I dunno, I'm not sure how this whole Heat scene is supposed to go down, if I'm gonna be quarantined or whatever."  The dread was still there at the bottom of your lungs, diminished but lingering.

 _'Depends on my Dad,'_ John answers honestly.  _'And if Captain Rogers approves, and if -'_   A car door shuts in the background, directions are traded, something rustles against the receiver.  _'Oof.  If I can transfer Agencies so soon after qualifications.  I think I'm on a two year contract right after school, but once I get my flight clearance I can visit literally whenever!'_

Your throat works in a dry click.  John would gab until sunrise if you let him, and you damn near want to let him.  You hang up, clear the screen to thumb out a departing text instead: _brb, gotta go get dicked down._

 _hehe, gross,_ John replies immediately, followed by a winky face and the reassurance that he was, like, weirdly kind of proud of you, man!  He honestly thought you'd never leave Bro's apartment, which was why he was working so hard to get some independence for the both of you, and oh man he was _just_ lamenting how he couldn't find an Ace his age who was ready to take on a single Sky Nation 'Meg, much less two; all his lady-suitors so far had been old and kinda scary!  And -

You darken the phone screen, comforted by the ping-buzz of the text receiver, that John was not only still willing to talk to you, but open to joining your new House, however far down the line.  He hadn't abandoned that dream, had been working toward it in fact.

Steve had retired to his own cloud of rapidly arriving texts, and passes a few minutes more concluding the conversations before turning his nose back into your hair.  "Good?"

"Are you magic?" You accuse instead of answering, and your voice cracks through.

Steve tucks his phone away to pull you back over into both arms.  "I'm science, actually," he says.  "Injected with science, then radiated with more science.  Are _you_ magic?"

You snort, and you know that the hot puddle running down the side of your ass isn't a fear response because your dick has long since joined the party, Omega funk weighing the air.  "Yes," you deadpan, water bottle crackling in the silence of the parked car.  "You gonna carry me over the threshold, or do I hafta abra-cadabra myself to your place?"

"I'll carry you," Steve assures, pulling away to cautiously pry open the car door.  You've been strategically parked in an alley, and Steve chuffs his pleased surprise, weight leaving the cabin.  The rattle and rusty squeak of a fire escape ladder announces Steve's intent, because of course the subtlest path to an apartment was up the side of the building, where he didn't have to run into any conversational neighbors with a soggy Megan clung to his back.

You don't actually need carrying, roused to alert from the change in setting, the cold of the early morning air, the familiar background hum of a city in all its garbage-truck bustle.  You uncurl from the limo and catch your duffel from Rogers' throw.  You sling that duffel over your back and tighten the strap, but forego the leg-up Steve offers to perform a running flip off the opposite brick wall, instead, landing on the first iron platform with a rattle and a cuss.

God, but it hurts to move.

Steve was already climbing as you'd left for the wall, a military dead-lift up the side fencing of the platforms without so much as a glance at the stairs.  You follow his lead, because it's the quietest way up, and almost topple over into him once you make the final platform - the top floor, of course, because all the Alphas in your life were going to have a thing for rooftop escape routes.  But then you have to go sideways, a gymnast scramble onto the flat gravel-laid roof and down to the back of the building, a darker space where another, older fire escape dared you petulantly to step any way but carefully down its narrow ladders.

You definitely didn't expect Captain America to hole up in such an aging brownstone shitbox, but then what did you know from rents in New York?  The apartment definitely smells like Steve, once he's got the window rattle-tugged up, belying a frequent and recent enough use.

You throw your duffel through the window and duck in after it, eager to be closed up in the dark, to be warm, out of sight.  It ain't Texas, but the apartment is small enough and plain enough to ease your nerves the way the spacious flash of the Complex could not.  Even the clutter of Steve's place is familiar - a laptop left open on a low coffee table, takeout bags stuffed with old mail and newspapers lilting beside the door, workout clothes draped over any and every chair back, sketchbooks and notepads and stacks of _National Geographic_ and _Time_ and _Smithsonian_ on bare wood floors and polished wood end tables.

The kitchen is open and small and the only dining table is a rickety square foldable thing, tidied but for a little crystal vase of long-dried dandelions atop it, folding chairs leaned up in the cornering hall because Steve probably wolfed his breakfast at the counter like any redblooded American too busy for a sitting meal.  Bacon right off the stove, 'n shit.

Steve lingers at the open window, looking out into the alley, over across at the neighboring buildings.  He waves a greeting to some far-off area scout, then slides his bag from his shoulder to drop through the window on silent feet, reaching back to lift the duffel carefully after.  The window is eased shut, locked, his duffel bag dropped beside your own behind the wide couch.  "It's not much," Steve says, the 'but it's home' implied.  "Didn't really have warning for company.  The cleaning lady comes around on Thursdays."

You turn on heel, paused in the middle of the living room because it dipped down a few steps into an actual bower, roughly the size of a king mattress and softened by nothing more than the aged wood of the flooring.  "Is 'cleaning lady' code for something, or have we done extensive background checks?"

Steve joins your side, and your opinion of the apartment is carried well in your scent - you are hella goddamn comfortable, here.  "You'd be surprised how many people don't really recognize me up close, and this place isn't under my own name."

You snort, drift closer to Steve in the dark, your navigation lit by the streetlights outside. Heroes usually wore masks; and Steve Rogers technically died in the ocean seventy years ago, but recent world-saving events had unearthed his return as Captain America, broadcast the face under the cowl.  "What's your alias."

Steve exhales, glancing around to buy time to remember. "[Buck Rogers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Rogers).  He was a popular science-fiction protagonist back when I was growing up."

Your cheek bumps into Steve and you press your ear against the cool hill of his shoulder.  "I know who Buck Rogers is.  A little on the nose, ain't it?"

"Most people are too embarrassed to guess the obvious, I find."

"The emperor wears no clothes," you agree.  "You're kind of a ruthless motherfucker, huh?"

The shoulder under your lean shrugs, a smooth roll under its jacket.  "Not in whole.  There are sensors around here somewhere; FRIDAY's always at hand if I ever need support.  And if you do, if you need that too - if anybody comes around who maybe shouldn't be around."  He exhales, wincing.  "The neighborhood's secure, every other door belongs to someone in SHIELD, or a Federal Worker.  I'm not just slumming it in the hopes that I don't get harassed.  There are precautions, maybe even more effective than the mousetrap of that Compound."

Shit, you hadn't even thought about  _safety,_ just Steve's psychological warfare against nosy neighbors.  How did Brodie even keep you both sequestered as easily as he had?  You knew your apartment building, your neighborhood, your neighbors.  The bodegas, the shitty diners, the grocery warehouses.  Strider sightings rarely made news - was it a nondisclosure with the studios?  Did newspapers blacklist Captain America paparazzi grabs, to honor him as like a public servant?  Shit, man.

You step down to crouch in the center of the bower and wipe your mouth against your wrist, elbows on knees and ass on heels, Steve's sweater bunching up against your stomach with a pleasant pressure.

Steve joins you in your crouch, watching you sidelong with his forearms draped over his knees.  "Aren't you uncomfortable?"  It is a careful accusation, but you know what he means, your Heat in the air 'n all.

"Believe it or not, babe, I've been through worse."  And it's not some stoic braggery - you are SUPER fragile against emotional upset right now, but the physical pain that could buckle most civilians is only as bad as a particularly grueling wilderness sesh at Brodie's heels.  You don't mention this, and attempt to assuage Steve's doubt so as to not come across totally Draconian, "Psychologically speaking, no, I _haven't_ been through anything close to this, much less what we could consider 'worse'.  I would like several vodkas and a dumptruck of cigarettes right now, but not because 'my stomach hurts'."

You could probably do with a CloneDave right about now, but that was about as probable as stripping down to masturbate at Steve, that's how exposed you'd feel hugging on some dead stand-in.  Because yeah, suuuper fragile against every and any emotion, up to and including shame.

"Well I'm not going to get you drunk and I don't have any cigarettes on hand."  Steve rocks back to an easy perch on the bottom bower stair, legs stretching out in front of him to reach his bootlaces, starts tugging at their knots.  "And I know it's not the same, but just about everyone on the team has lived apart from the safety of a Pack. We know the risks, and the balancing act that goes along to stay sane."

You sit back, too, a less graceful plop on your bony ass, missing the stair, glass-studded tsinelas scuffing up the wood floor.  "Yeah, probably not the same," you agree softly, because you highly doubt that any of the Avengers were ever an alien Meg in love with a monstrous brother-daddy, isolated from human connection by dint of both career and species.  "But thanks."

Steve toes his boots off, leans back on his elbows to watch you through the gloom.  "I didn't have a Pack, either, when the person I looked up to the most, the only person I could consider Pack, up and left to fight in the war."

You dare a glance out of your peripheral, wrap yourself a little tighter in Steve's sweater, exhale slowly.  It was a myth, that Alphas could go it alone better than anybody.  Alphas had the worst time going it alone; Betas and Omegas didn't run themselves violently bat-house from isolation, they just sort of got depressed or psychotically horny.  "Did you Break?"

Steve scoffs.  "Often.  Ferality meant something different back then."  He raises his hands,  "They hunted it out for their soldiers, weaponized it in the field, like it was some hidden, natural frame of mind we need only tune ourselves into, to live as the primitives who came before."  He drops his arms, pushes up from the stairs to a stand, to shrug out of his jacket.  "I know what it's like to live half out of your mind, and grow up fighting even though you're too young and too small for it.  I know what it feels like when people mistake the luck of your survival for strength, and when you've lived damn near alone so long that you think the very possibility of friendship is some evil trick.  But that's just me."

Steve drapes his jacket over the arm of the couch, shuffles near to crouch at your feet, tug your wrecked sandals off one at a time.  "You?  I think you'll do better than I did.  I think you'll be all right.  You've got more friends, for starts, and I would have given a limb in 1943 to know a Stark the way you know Tony."  He kneels forward, cups his hands under your knees, runs a deft check down your calves to your ankles and back up, then tugs the hem of Pepper's capris, a greeting, a beckon.  

The laugh blurts out of you, wet with a threat of tears you're too shocked to produce.  Obliquely, you knew most of that, about Captain America - he was a sickly dude before THE SERUM, Packless, best friend off to war.  You just never calculated the sum of those facts, that the reason young Steve Rogers probably got into so many fistfights was because young Steve Rogers was half out of his gourd with existential despair.  You keep your hands to yourself, because you're terrified of this new 3-dimensional creature in front of you, because you honestly don't know what it will do or say next.  At least the chronusbugs acted with consistency.

Steve scents your apprehension, grips behind your knees a little firmer.  "I'm not Feral any more," he amends softly.  "Celebrity or not, they wouldn't let me have this job if I was still a threat."  He eases your knees apart, and you are momentarily blinded by the gut-punch of pleasure this spooks up from your pelvic floor.

"Gnuh, shit," you slur, elbows catching back against the bower's top stair, chin digging into your chest to glare wildly down at Steve's calm dismantling of the front of your pants.  "Y'don't gotta," you wheedle on Steve's behalf, because you're a self-sterilized paper cut-out of an alien, long and weird and hardly even 'Meg; hardly even human.

"John warned me you were contrary,"  Steve says, thumbs tapping your hip bones, waits for you to object, then peels the capris open to expose the flushed chub of your hard dick.  "Set twenty of your own old friends in a room and the three who would rather shake your hand than hug you are the three who would most rather get you into bed."

Your eyes widen and your words dry up.  That... wasn't wrong.  Goddamn.  You swallow back a load of spit, hitch backward up the stairs to let the sweater drape down to your thighs, while Steve tugs your pants down, off.  He's smelled like interest since the limo, but you're still paralyzed with doubt, movement sluggish in the drown of adrenaline, because you've never done this before, not like this, not with someone... like this.

Steve shifts his weight gingerly, knees planted apart for balance, floorboards squeaking. "Call me old-fashioned, but I would like to know, for my own edification, if you do actually want to have sex right now."

Your chest hiccoughs and your eyelids slump down all moony, knees clamped shut only because the bower is cold.  "Nerd," you whisper, reverently.

Steve sits back on his heels, and turns his ear at you to prompt clarity, a hale stack of Alpha at ease in his own Den, unhurried and receptive, probably used to the New York chill that threads its way through drafty brownstone apartments.

"Nerd," you repeat, a cool accusation despite the crack in your voice, the shiver. You can be casual about this. You can pretend you fuck strangers on the reg, sure, since it's not any different from all the other pretending you've gotten up to in your lifetime. "M'okay Captain Consent-Kink, verbal contract signed sealed _and_ delivered; let's get married." You reach for the stair to help roll yourself over, to assume the position, but Steve's hands catch under your knees and you are momentarily relieved at the idea that he's nixing the whole damn thing.

"Not trying to be a jerk about this, Dave, but you don't have to turn your back like that." Steve looms in, and you are wide-eyed with a sudden stab of inexplicable terror, your throat and belly exposed within biting range like that.

Even though you don't have that excuse, exactly - because it wasn't as if Brodie had ever tried to fuck you face to face; if you ever tried to fuck Brodie face to face he might be bothered by the full mobility of your arms, of hands that could find a weapon, of fingers that could scratch and blind, even if you personally would never do that. You would grief Bro face to face, sure, but you always rolled over in the end, got your ass out, made things safe for you both if Bro couldn't be bothered to pin you over on his own urgency.

Steve slides his callused fingertips under your sweater, under Pepper's sweat-damp T-shirt, rucking both up to bundle under your chin, obscure your line of sight, the lean stretch of your torso shivering in the dark, hips pinned by bracing hands.  You open your knee expecting to get fingered, tasted, but double upright in a startled jolt when Steve's mouth closes over your dick with a hot, hard suckle.  You climax immediately, terrified, fists bunching in Steve's T-shirt so hard its collar sags lopsided when you let go.

Steve doesn't let you turn over, there in the terse silence of the humble hardwood bower, gets his hand and mouth under the sweater you've been left to stay warm by, jacks you off, drags his biting kiss across your nipple and lets you come apart in a riotous clash of roller-coaster fear and thrill.

It's torture.  You're braced for an attack that would never feasibly arrive, and delivered back to your senses unharmed, fucked out but unbearably het up, because Steve only ever brushes his knuckles up against the swampy mess of your slicked asscrack, which drives you straight to simpering Omegatown, population: one whiny alien.

This doesn't make a fucking dent in Steve's composure, of course.  He's flushed and the apple of him has gone all savory-pie-crust, sure, but you can't find that telltale note of Brodie's umami and mournfully telegraph this into the air, calling for an Alpha who couldn't answer, which only coincidentally eggs Steve on. "I'm here," Steve croaks into the damp mess of your hair, hand wedged between your legs as your thighs clamp and tremble through another shallow orgasm.

You wrap your arms around Steve's neck like if you hold tight enough you might be able to squeeze Brodie out of him, mouth falling open in a blind apery of past bad habits, biting lightly at Steve's throat in provocation, daring Brodie to retaliate, like you could annoy him into materialization.

Steve grunts in surprise, chest jerking in a laugh, and his elbow hits a stair with a loud smack followed by a soft curse. "Dee," he pleads, and the scent of him is not annoyance, or Bro's high note of affront, but a spike of tart sweat against your tongue that mellows to a tannin in the back of your throat. Your eyes roll up under the flutter of your lids and you bite harder just under Steve's ear, firming your grip as Steve pins you back into the uncomfortable jutt of the bower stairs, wedges his face into the hard scrunch you've made of your own shoulder and neck. His breath puffs out in short wet chuckles under your ear because your posturing, besides its absurdity, is also kind of flattering - and Steve isn't the type of berk to take himself too seriously, doesn't have to safeguard his dignity or pride or whatever from your antagony.

You smear your open mouth further down the firm column of Steve's neck and taste an approval so thick and heady that it makes you cough, diaphragm robbed of its next breath by the fingers wrung up into the slick heat of your ass. "Ah," you protest against the spit-wet bruise you'd left, hissing like you're stepping down into a hot bath. _"Uh,"_ you rasp again, pleading this time, slithering your grip off Steve's shoulders to try and push some space between you, try to get yourself over, relent the squirming discomfort that you were being really goddamn rude right now.

"Sorry, hold on,"  Steve rucks his slick-wet hand under your bony ass to haul you up onto his thigh and into an embrace, arm curled around your waist to pull you upright into his lap. "Better?"

This is after your, what, fourth orgasm, so you are short on reply, mouth pulled back in distaste and abdomen violently trembling in apprehension. This isn't right, you're not presenting properly; this is an affront, facing forward like this, a challenge, an aggravation you'd pull specifically to tick Brodie off, and you lose your breath when your shoving arms do nothing to unseat you, chin turned and neck craning to lean away, eyes wild in their roll to avoid contact.

"I think I believe you now," Steve prompts dryly, flushed across the bridge of his nose, blonde hair at his temples dark with sweat. He stands, enhanced strength keeping you easily aloft, your bare legs framing his hips. He takes the bower stairs in a stride and you try not to fall out of the cradle of his arms because you are about as cuddly as a bag full of coat-hangers.

You grunt a token reply, anxious in a way that's almost comfortable, because this type of fear is familiar, this type of fear is Brodie-flavored, a fear for your physical safety, the uncertainty of a moment just before a strike, an old haunt that's easier to face than the abandonment you've been dealing with otherwise.

"That you haven't really been around the block, so to speak," Steve continues evenly, firming one arm under the seat of your weight so he can open the bedroom door in the narrow hallway.

The delicate use of metaphor draws you out of your head a bit and you snort, glazed stare stuck in the middle distance of a handful of memories. You aren't a slut; not that there was anything wrong with that, Megs rights and all, and not like you _wouldn't_ be if you'd ever been given the free time and the lineup of petite brunettes - but you don't smell like seven different people and aren't exactly all that read up on Megan bedroom tricks - never really thought you'd _have to_ be; that whatever your fate and whomever your future partner/s you could just roll over and take it, no complaints. But Steve is prompting a whole entire participation gamut demanding you to be present and accounted for that you just, uh, can't. Can not. _Do._

"Yeah," you rasp, fingertips that have been bitten blunt of their nails now digging into the cotton over Steve's shoulders as he carries you into the cool dark of a bedroom that smells sharply empty, devoid any trace of Steve compared to the rest of the apartment. You wonder if this is a guest room, if you're going to get four walls to yourself again.

"So I'm going to go slow," Steve promises, the wholesome idiot.

"No," you whine, given some breathing room once you're set down on the high four-poster bed, the room left dark. Steve might not have had a volatile sense of dignity but your self-image was paramount, and the longer this fuckery dragged on the further you were removed from your cool and the lamer you felt. You curl your knees up and tuck the sweater over your legs, an unsexy ball of ankle-clenching apprehensions on a dusty white comforter you know is going to be a bitch to wash in anything less than an industrial front-loader.

"No?" Steve draws his chin back, wipes the back of his wrist under his mouth, fist on hip to study you. He drifts out of the room and into the hall, and the soft yellow light of the bathroom spills into the bedroom, lighting up the green of the old wallpaper and the glint of the various pictures hung around, the glare off the glass obscuring the content of their frames. Steve returns with a glass of water and a damp cloth that he bends in to cup over the back of your neck.

You almost crumple under the cool comfort, a trembling oath of pleasure punching its way past the seize in your lungs.

Steve hums a conversational reply to your nonsense, sets the glass of water on the undecorated bedstand and shucks his khakis, sitting on the edge of the bed to get them down the length of his ridiculous legs. You might make an attractive couple, matched for lanky yet opposed in bulk, and you're the both of you mostly leg. Steve leaves himself in briefs and t-shirt - meeting your modesty for reasons you have yet to begin to even try and fathom - and perches forward with his hands braced loosely on his knees, fine blonde hairs softening the hard lines of his thighs. "This isn't like a bandaid, Dave. It won't hurt less if we rip it off quick."

You mumble a weak protest, then, clearer, "Take all the time you wanna, George, only don't -" you can't even put it into words, because you don't even know what the hell is wrong with you. Obviously Steve isn't going to headbutt you or stab you or get his teeth into any important arteries. _Obviously._ "Mnh," you grumble, grinding your teeth around the withdrawn protest. "Don't take too long," you mumble, a weak substitution.

Steve glances over his shoulder at you with a wry twist of his mouth and a slanted eyebrow and you feel about as ridiculous as you sound.

"Ain't what I'm used to," you say, compelled to explain. "So maybe it's better for me if we just one-and-done this. Patrician, like."

Steve looks forward again, as if to read answers from the far wall. "Patrician?"

"Yeah," you drawl, throat raw on the night's distress and voice swollen with all the words you've had to choke back. "You know, no time to waste on foreplay, got to fuck like four more Megans after this and then get back to the market or the piazza or whatever to sell some goats. You can't tell me you think Roman nobility were the lay-in-bed sort, naw, those people were ambitious." You snag the water off the bedstand, brave a sip, return the glass with a wobble in your elbow you can feel in the base of your skull. "Had ambitions. Shit to do." You sound drunk.

Steve watches you curl your arm back into the lumpy ball of sweater you've made of yourself, and straightens in his sit with a sigh. ",What you're used to'," he starts, stops, glares out at the bedroom doorway. Closes his eyes. Composes himself. "Is 'not slow'?" he asks, doubtful.

You nod, straighten your legs out in a cautiously forced stretch across the bed, despite the aching gnaw this unleashes just behind your balls.

"But it's been years since your last Alpha," Steve recites, because oh yeah, Pierson would have been dead, what, three years ago? The lies were wobbling in orbit like china plates spun at the ends of their circus batons. Who knew about the First Heat thing? What were you supposed to do after Pierson, just suffer alone in Brodie's custody? Suppression wasn't some jack-in-the-box you could stuff back down once it was out - 'Megs were kept close by their Household custodians because once they were switched on they'd be switched on until they died. If your pride demanded you say that you didn't sleep around after Pierson, well, then what _did_ you do?

Or you could admit that you never before had a real Heat, and fib that you weren't 'used to' leisurely fucking because you weren't used to fucking at all, but then there was that Bonding bite scar to answer for, _goddammit._

"And," Steve continues, revelation coloring his tone. "You're scared of me."

You sniffle, just to clear your nose, and swallow with a dry click in the back of your throat. "Thousands of evil crawlies that can move faster than light ain't got me gone yet, and I'm scared of _you?"_

Steve turns to face you, leg curling up on the bed, hands folded in the pocket this makes of his lap. "That, or you're scared of everything, and I just happen to be here."

You do laugh, a short clap of sound that wrenches bone deep in your chest, and fold the damp wash cloth over to a fresh side, replace it against the side of your neck, darkening the collar of the sweater. "H'ain't scared of you," you insist. "Not something I can control, being sat all face to face, like I'm posing you a challenge. Feels..." You jerk your shoulder forward in a shrug, sweater and shirt damp in their cling. "Wrong."

To your bafflement, Steve scoffs. "Well, that's not going to change. I don't take Oughties from behind; it's demoralizing." He folds his arms in front of his chest, an actual challenge in the flint of his tone. "So you're either going to get comfortable with face-forward, or you're going to have a very rough week sweating this out."

This is so far removed from the realm of possible reactions that you're actually stunned - literally robbed of thought and motion. You'd been ever-prepared for the type of Alpha who wouldn't spare the spit to get you wet, that much-maligned imaginary Auction Bid who would have stank of possessiveness and greed, would have given you thirty rough minutes of knotting to suffer through whenever their whim struck. You were not in any way prepared for the type of Ace who was going to stare you down over your bedroom anxiety like anything _less_ than a spread-eagle invitation was as bad as rape.

"Well," you try to argue, heat blooming up your chest and neck. This was officially too weird for you to handle. "Cut your finger for me, then. That does it, right? Subdues the Heat? Hormones in the blood? It's worked before." You reach out to tug at Steve's forearm. "Just for now."

Steve doesn't budge, expression crumpled down into concern. "Who, uh. Did that for you? Was it after Pierson?"

You roll your eyes, tug insistently to try and unsit the cross of Steve's arms, a notably audacious grab you'd pull on Egbert whenever he was being stubborn. "Don't worry about it, hoss. I said I wasn't as loose as the Auction made me out to be, I didn't say I was a Saint."

Steve nods, taking this in stride, and relents his arm to your grip. "Or you could try it my way, and just give yourself time to adjust. I'm not kidding about the boned fish thing, Dave, I'd rather not have to fuck someone too overwrought by a Heat to even know I was in the room." And it went without saying that Steve would want to get his knot in to secure your allegiance, you foreign dangerous thing. His grip mirrors your own, wrapping warm fingers around your forearm, your wrists pressed against one another.

"How many Megs have you had?" you drawl, conversationally, since Steve wasn't a nun.

Steve shrugs, thumb firming a circle against your pulse point, and his admission is softened by the haze of memory. "An entire chorus line, I suppose - but before you go getting imaginative about that, it was just a role I served for the job we all had at the time. Nobody wanted to wait until their season got bad enough to get had by some Jack or Jenny off the bus, and I was a steady enough fella that if a family came out of the gig, well, _great."_ The corner of his nose wrinkles. "Of course we still had birth control back then, and no such thing as a custody Auction; mercy's sake."

You're a job. You sort of already knew this. It shouldn't hurt at all to be reminded. It should refresh you to hear it, in fact, because Bro only ever treated you the same, just some chore to get performed, just some Problem to Solve. But you take your hand back like you're shriveling up in on yourself, pale brows faintly pinched in distant confusion, teeth bared in a wince. "So try it your way," you mumble, subdued. "Since you apparently know a lot more about this kinda shit than I do. Jeeze." You're just an assignment, a duty to answer. It only hurts because you already know you don't get a happy ending - that 'Megs were as beholden to their Alphas as Alphas _weren't_ beholden to anything, not Omegan Mates, not the Packs they led, definitely not each other, free to drive themselves insane in their self-isolation.

Alphas weren't beholden, they could damn themselves to seclusion and breaking feral so much easier than anyone else, suiting the image of their independence while eroding the very health and safety of the societies in which they were inexplicably put in charge.

Steve was beholden to his duty, maybe, and to being a decent guy, but you were going to need him in ways he was never going to need you, and you were only ever comfortable with that when it was Brodie rolling his eyes at your pester, because hell, if anyone deserved the responsibility it would have been the guy who literally stole you from a lab.

Steve nods forward in relief, and scoots down the bed to reach your legs. He tucks a hand over your nearest ankle to thumb quick circles against the soft patch of skin just below the knob of bone, massaging the scent gland there. This chases a buzz up your leg, the inside of your knee tugging with each firm pass of Steve's thumb until you have to pull in to the side or risk actual laughter, expression tight and wobbly in places because _oh hell no_ you are NOT ticklish.

"Sorry," Steve amends anyway, and replaces both hands under both your ankles, firmer and slower circles shooting sparks up your bones, shins to knees to the cradle of your hips, your scent layering the night's emotional journey into the air, a slow sad melody of caution and longing. Steve shifts further onto the bed in a crouching kneel, watching the muscle in your legs jump and shiver as his grip travels up to work the tension out of your calves.

You're propped in a slump against the headboard watching Steve watch you, your eyes glassy with unshed tears, deeply miserable and doubly confused. This should be great, getting some leisurely dicking-down by some goddamn gorgeous A-List rando who's already had your prick in his beautiful mouth. This should be _awesome._ You don't know what the hell is wrong with you. "I don't know what the hell is wrong with me," you echo, and pull the wet cloth from your neck to scrub your face, huffing out like you'd just had a good long sob. You don't know what's wrong with you, because you don't know that your body is quailing for the Alpha that seeded it.

Steve kneels between your legs, sits back on his heels to pull your knee up, palming down the top of your long thigh. The light from the bathroom falls in from the hall and cuts a shadow across half of his face, the pupil of one eye gone wide and deep. "I can't say that there's nothing wrong with the situation, D, but I know there's nothing wrong with _you."_ A matroyshka reveal has started up, however - because hidden in your apple, past Anthony's warm soak of bourbon and Pepper's cocoa, fronting your chemical summons; a curl of citrus, a waft of tobacco, foreign and pungent and unmistakably Ace.

Steve can't match smell to a name, but he knows that some sorta mate has had their scent on you as recently as half a month ago; and he knows that your arrival was abrupt, that you were ill-prepared, clearly upset but doing your best to school your emotions - emotions that could no longer contain themselves to cautious flinching or denials of effect.

"Oh, plenty wrong with me," you croak, oblivious, both knees rising to tighten against Steve's waist as his thumb digs in to the bundle of scar tissue below your hip that so lopsides your gait in rainy weather. "Bum elbow. Trick shoulder. Makes a noise when I do this -" you tilt your head sharply, neck vertebrae cracking audibly. "I mean I'm no frontliner for the Can-Can."

Steve's smile is close-lipped and small, but it's there. "I was mostly kidding, about the chorus line." He sighs through his nose, drawing a conclusion. It was entirely possible that you could have taken up with another Ace after Pierson and simply kept the relationship secret, to spare your paramour from Houston's wrath - and with your skillset, it would have been easier for you than most to conduct an affair. "We didn't exactly have a lot of free time, on the tour, and suppressants were, well, not _legal,_ but definitely not as restricted as today's."

You curl your toes, knuckles cracking, unawares that you still had any Brodie left in you, even for as desperately as you had holed up in his bed, pining. "They regulated the Yellow Leed same way they regulated the Red Poppy. Entire communities criminalized in the seventies for growing and distribution, strict control over the field licensing, that whole corporate Pharmaceutical rh-" You flinch forward in a brief abdominal spasm, air hissing out between your clenched teeth. "Racket." This isn't a natural Heat, not really - just a confluence of chemical heaped atop the stressors of your loss; all the urgency to get mated but none of the comfortable appeal to beg by.

Steve leans in, tastes the panic venting up from the damp cave you've made of your sweater, leans back out. If you were fresh out of a mating relationship, no wonder you were so buggy. "Compromise?"

You unclench your fists from the hem of the sweater, nits of worn felting marbled under your sweaty palms. "Well the internet has helped expose misinformation campaigns to the public, and some of the coastal states have already legalized growing and distribution even if Leed's not something insurance companies are going to help the working class 'Megs afford, so -"

"D," Steve chuffs. "Compromise for tonight."

You're a little affronted that there's even a conversation still going on, and frustrated that you can't center, can't get your body loose and lax and sweet for it, that you're actually scared of someone you're pretty sure you could murder as easily as you could sneeze. "Okay," you hedge, wary of another emotional roller coaster, of those peaks of pique and lows of breathless desperation.

Steve nods, considering for a beat, and then, "Okay." He sits back to fold your legs together, lets them fall to the side, lets you turn over on your hip.

A tangle inside of you uncinches, loosens, spools out from a relief of pressure and into a fluttery shiver that crawls higher up your spine, aching in your jaw, the back of your neck gone cold and tense. Your ears buzz, your diaphram sinks to open your lungs, and you dig a pillow out from under the tight wrap of the bedcovers to cling to your blushing face, elbows in, sweater riding up and damp washcloth wedged under your shoulder.

Steve braces his arm in front of your stomach and looms in; it's not face-forward but you're not face down, either, protecting your soft parts but with a modicum of leverage, and this way you get to curl up a little, knees in and ankles crossed like some anime cryptid fresh out of the space-pirate's cryogenic treasure pod. Weight sinking his elbow into the bed, Steve reaches between you to shove his shorts down, palming his half-hard cock to nudge the blunt uncircumsized head against the wet cleft of your ass, with all the practical dispassion of a dutiful Head of House, of someone who used to do this for his friends in the chorus.

You pull your knee up to open yourself, exhale like you'll never run out of air, and turn your cheek into the cool give of the pillow, eyelids drooping. You used to strain to glimpse Brodie coming undone, used to revel in whatever spare noises he'd let slip, but this feels like an invasion of privacy against Steve, like there's too much personal info revealing itself too soon of someone you'd only just met, so you squeeze the pillow firmer over your face and tuck your chin.

This aversion comes across like rejection, so Steve holds his pose until your knees squirm together and your breath stutters out in want, chin turning up again to expose your neck, adam's apple pulling in the spasm of your hard swallow. You stuff the pillow back up over your head and the Thrall creeps in, more a suggestion than a command, like four walls folding over to muffle out the noise of the outside world; the early morning news report playing too loud in the neighboring apartment, the distant cry of a police siren echoing up from the streets, the coastal howl of wind past stovepipe chimneys.

There's only Steve, the heat from his cage and the scent from the dark spots of his t-shirt and the slow breach of his cock into a body that never stopped taking knot, the room swaying under you, adrift out to sea.

'That sounds nice', Steve had remarked in all sincerity, when you told him you'd never been sunk under Thrall; and perhaps he meant that a life so free of conflict as to never need the chemical instruction from your Alpha/s was an ideal one, that yours was an iron-clad will of self control. 'That sounds nice', Steve had said, not 'that IS nice', because the lack of Thrall in your life, Dave Strider, comes off like a story, like a fiction, like an Alpha wouldn't have been able to get near you without sending this comfort up.

But no, Brodie had never pulled this draw on you, or if he did he'd have done with such precision and subterfuge that you couldn't have noticed the switch, and none of the other Alphas in your life ever had to calm your shit down, professional detachment that you had. Instead, Bro left you to stew in your emotions, let you have your anxiety to learn by, trained you in self-regulation (cloneDave assistance, really) and dusted his hands of your inability to fabricate chemical signals (suppression OR projection) as soon as you were categorized Omegan. As it stands, you just feel robbed of the connection you could have had, like Bro's failure to humanize himself sufficiently was your loss more than anyone's.

Especially? Because this? Feels great. It's anesthesia for feeling too many feelings, a clearance of mental static, a grounding and a summons. You curl awkwardly sideways, up, nosing for a connection, arms beggingly empty in the sweat-heavy drape of your sleeves.

Steve leans down to meet you, to spare the stretch in your sides, and it's such a huge fucking relief to get your embrace looped over the back of his neck that you hiccough, hysterical. Why wasn't this A Thing, before?

"Sorry," Steve answers, because your brain-to-mouth filter has dropped again. "I didn't know you were grieving." Ruefully, "Thought it was just me."

A mumble ekes past your clenched teeth, brief concern that Steve would be grieving, curious over whom or what or how.

"Dave," Steve prompts, easing his hips back to slide his cock out, because you aren't answering. He rucks his arm down to press the top of your knee, straightening you out a little, and ducks out of the hard clench of your arms with a brief dragging smush of his face down the front of your sweater. Hair mussed from the escape, he shifts his weight to his elbow and hip, bulk settling behind you, top leg slotting snugly behind yours. "Better?"

The stiff log of Steve's shaft is a familiar press behind your sac and the dry catch of his briefs is rough against the back of your ass and thighs and this position is par and all but you are out of your mind with anticipation, hands sliding and slipping over the bedcover in your scramble to get your ass pressed back into Steve's hips, breathing ragged. It's a painless ascent to your next orgasm when Steve's hand cups under the sweater to fold over your dick, and then a very sharp pain lances down the center of you, like a dull roofing nail dragging sun-hot from the inside of your breast bone to your navel.

You hiccough, jerk your head into the pillow like you only need to gather your wits back up from the boxing ring floor. The pain sinks lower, ass clenching empty where a knot should be, and your next exhale keens a bit at the end.

Steve's only waiting for the sour note of fear in you to trade places with the heady dough of want, massaging your hip in his palm and battering the back of your ear with a breathy call to patience.

But it hurts, way down past the roots of you, immaterial to a physical evidence of injury, just a wild bullshit pain signal you can't fucking meditate away - so you complain, dragging armfuls of comforter up against your stomach as if to smother the flame out. "Ffnmf," is the closest you come to a coherent demand, wedging your face down between shoulder and bed to muffle your (small) frustrated keen (scream).

Steve grunts a quiet request, works an arm under your torso to pull you flush against him, into his pocket of heat and sweat and you twist your head fretfully to snag a better glimpse because all you can actually tell by scent anymore is that yep, that sure is an Alpha back there, existing. You don't know if Steve's annoyed or content or horny or disinterested because that part of your brain has shut down entirely; you only know that Steve is present and breathing and holding on.

You _whimper,_ a splintered teenaged noise, and tug out against the bed, and Steve's arm drops to let you fall forward, concern smoothing out from the crease of his brow, relief lightening his regard because he knows what happens next and, yes, you do exactly as expected -

\- you slump first to your chest, a puddle of bones and hot-damp sweater, then wobble your arms under yourself to turn, twisting to face Steve, because you _have to_ see what's going on, you gotta check in, you need to know -

\- like you strained to see Brodie, sometimes -

\- and your leg reaches over all spidery to hook over Steve's hip, to pull you back in, a lithe grab-n-tuck, meeting the open consolation in Steve's expression, relief hung through the lines of him, which relieves you in turn, because you _want_ to appeal to the Alpha in the room, you _want_ a thick knot tied hard and unyielding in the aching cleft of you, and you _want_ a full gutload of spunk to douse the fire wracking through your insides.

This is the flag of want that Steve was waiting for, and he reaches under you to bunch the hem of the sweater out of the way, nudges his cockhead against the tight clench of your cramping ass, teeth set against the struggle in, rueful that he's had to choose between acting on you in a state of fear or acting on you in a state of physical pain, and neither ideal but both inevitable to your situation.

Physical pain, at least, you can handle - and it's a good ache, getting Steve's cock back in, a familiar, reassuring pressure that carries the Thrall to a deeper note, sinks you further into the muffle. The sudden bloom of a knot once Steve is rooted is not so rote, and you startle in his hold, blinking up from your feverish distraction to check on your Alpha (well, not YOUR Alpha, but, the Alpha in the room).

Steve meets your inspection with a small lift of his chin, a beckon and a warning before he eases over onto his back, scooping you with him to an upright straddle, keeping you tied.

You cry out, an untested squawk, hands scrambling against the ropey iron of Steve's arms, knees trembling against the bed so hard the mattress shakes a little; you lose all strength to keep upright, and your weight lodges the knot further in, your half-hard dick twitching against the bunched cotton t-shirt over the flat plane of Steve's abdomen, spirit willing but body wrung down.

"Sorry," Steve grunts, absurdly, and curls up to sit you a little more comfortably in his lap, his knot tugging your nerves so hard every joint spasms with pleasure.

You dash sweat out of your eyes with the back of your wrist and sniffle, punch-drunk, numb hands bumping up Steve's hold until you can drape your forearms over his shoulders, chin tilted conversationally because the theme of your subspace is casual chill, apparently.

Steve rolls your sweater up your back and pulls the bunched fabric over your head, t-shirt and all bridging your upper arms in a warm bundle that you dip your elbows to hug, satisfied by the soak of yourself in the air. Steve pulls your arms down, frees you, clothing dropped only as far as the top of your leg in case you need it again. You're already grabbing for the hug, pelvic floor clamping weakly against the suggestion of a climax as Steve shifts inside of you. "Hold on," Steve asks, hoarse, folding your arms back down to he can take hold of the side of your neck.

You purr, head lolling, throat exposed, and close your eyes to ride out the tremble of a realized orgasm, the chemicals of Steve's release climbing your feedback loop of want and delivery. You shake, and rock, and chase the next breath in like surfacing from deep water, the arm left to the embrace curling up behind Steve's head to grab a fistful of his hair. You fold together snugly, the hard vice of Steve's bonding bite flushing hot and cold down your ribs and up again to spark through your very fingertips.

Steve waits until you stop rocking to release the hold, mumbles another apology over the bruise off-center from the scar of Brodie's bite, chuffing his hand down the length of your damp back like congratulating a marathon runner. You're sunk so deep in Thrall that you can't fathom the offense these apologies are addressing, only glad to hear Alpha voice colored through by a soothe, your face bumping into Steve's face like a moth against a window pane, hungry for the sun. ",S'fine," you answer despite the layers of muzzy dissociation, because you are anything if not an _accommodating_ cock-zombie.

Steve hums his appreciation, fixes your legs so the feeling can return to your feet, your knees wrapping forward around his waist instead of knelt down on the mattress, and this pulls your ass _in_ and _down_ and you moan, a little, a melodic Megan croon for that knot to get fucked in deeper, hips hitching. Steve's mouth pulls back in discomfort and he shifts to grab your weight under your ass, relieving the pressure, holding you still.

The chalky waft of your pregnancy is telling Steve to be careful, a bitter taste in the back of his throat that warns he's taken a mouthful of somebody else's Ought, but he isn't about to let you go early just for his own comfort. 

You still, breathing, watching the inside of your eyelids. Your Heat ebbs away with the sort of buzz that suggests a linger, shore sand left wet by waves that would return for high tide tomorrow.

Steve's knot softens slowly, a trickle of fluids turned into a seep turned into a gush down between you, your backlogged slick puddling into the front of his briefs.

Your ass clamps down after its loss and Steve tucks you up off of his dick to spare him the over-stim, hissing between clenched teeth as your heads butt softly into one another, forehead against neck and jaw and down to neck again. You rub your cheek into the cotton over Steve's shoulder to wipe the sweat off your face, and then rub in again, harder, to really get the smell of you on him, Housemeg instinct.

Steve's chest jerks in a silent chuff over this, surprised. He leans gingerly back to tuck his wet cock into his ruined briefs, and slouches against the headboard, regarding you with a dark-pupil study as you fold aside to get your legs back, ease your hips from the strain of their spreading and collapse sideways onto the bounce of the mattress springs. The grim set of Steve's mouth is a little too Brodie-esque for your current Thrall and you let the longing wash in, clumsy with your emotions.

A line appears between Steve's eyebrows, just a small dent really, expression otherwise impassive as he makes a semi-circle cave of his arm to invite you against him.

You wedge hard into that invitation, stuffed into the heap of dislodged pillows just under the curve of Steve's arm, sword-bent fingers curled into the hem of his shirt as if to stay the Thrall leaking from the air.  

"You stink," you mumble at first breath returned to your senses, because you are a wretch.

Steve's stomach shivers with a tired chuckle. "It's been seventy years, give me a break."

You wrinkle your nose, because you didn't mean his performance or the immediacy of his dropped knot or whatever, but okay. The light in from the bathroom seems much brighter, now, sounds sharper, breaths and mattress shifts and the neighbor's weather report.

The AC kicks on to answer the temperature you've both raised in the room, and Steve peels himself from under your cling to stand from the bed, pads over to the wall thermometer and dials the place up to a nice Texan 75, which stutters the blast of cold air down to a neutral wind and then nothing. He strips in place, sighing with a wet-dog shake of his head, and wordlessly departs for the bathroom because yes he does actually literally smell, the high acidic pungency of a body in exercise, leftover flame retardant and smoke and outrage stitched in under the more appealing waft of all that fucking you just got up to.

The coupling had exorcised you of all your reeking stress, too, which lingers like cobwebs over your bare skin. You lay in the heap of pillows paralyzed with indecision, mooning over the spot Steve had so blithely vacated, and give up to twist down into that pocket of heat and scent, lungs trembling around the swell of your heart.

Obliquely, you know this is all just chemical exchange; Broderick was very consistent in his scientific dismantling of the human enigma of emotion. But that doesn't change how it feels, doesn't cheapen the full-body buzz or dismiss the bruised sense of awe warming you from legs to lungs.  You remember feeling this when Bro bit you, three years past - though you didn't have the Thrall to insulate you from the running litany of worry that so navigated most of your life choices, and Steve's bite hadn't broken skin.

You'd been so good those last three years - an exemplary Housemeg, bedding down with Bro even when your Heat did not demand it, flirting affectionately, your usual barbs dulled of their stab, supporting rather than antagonizing. Nothing Bro ever did was incidental, or impulsive - if you were so comfortable together, so in-step and so ready to conclude the hellportal case, that had to have been to a noble intent toward your future.  Brodie had wanted to start a House with you; you can't assume that was just some shitty lie to set you up.

You gather the energy to tilt yourself forward onto your elbows, then crawl meekly across the bed to reach for the water glass on the bedstand, which you nearly drop as the shower across the hall suddenly patters to life. Everything is louder, and brighter, and you realize that the lowkey buzz still swimming in the forefront of your brainbits is an oncoming bloodsugar migraine, because you have surpassed capacity on calorie expenditure and don't have the bodyfat reserves you need to _not_ be a total wuss over skipping a meal.

Your phone is all the way in the bower, in Pepper's capris, and if you make it that far out of bed then you might as well just forego the pizza order for something from the kitchen. You can't recall the address you're at, anyway, and Bro's credit cards are probably canceled by now, and who knows what's even open this early in the morning for delivery - probably not pizza, no.

You topple over the side of the bed and catch your weight on silent hands and feet, ninja poise even with a head swimming with hunger, and rest there in plank position on the bedside carpet to catch your breath, insides a-twinge with the chemical cocktail telling you to stay your ass put until the Alpha gets back, as if _surely_ that Alpha is going to feed you.

You wobble from the held plank position and tuck a knee down just in time to catch your weight, pushing up to a stand with all the clumsy labor of a drunk. You'd just been mated without a condom, all that hot wet weighed in your belly seeping down the inside of your legs. As far as you know, you are in Heat, and Hilde's impromptu self-surgery could have been reversed by the the most recent resurrection you affixed to swerve some bot-broke bones, and -

And, what? What if Steve wants pups? What if Steve doesn't want pups and just forgot that it isn't the 40s anymore and you're not on birth control. What if you want pups because you need to leave the next generation of world-savers behind should your immortal ass ever get lost through some portal to some distant hellscape or whatever. What if you don't want pups, because you don't want any of whatever the fuck is wrong with Brodie (and, by extension, you) to get passed down to some poor kid that never asked to be born.

You wait in place and shiver, staring empty-eyed at a photo of the New York skyline circa 1936, lost to introspection until Steve returns on silent feet to wrap a shower-warm towel around your waist, startling you out of your reverie.

Steve only snorts at your wild-eyed glare, and bends over an open dresser of drawers. "Think you can stay upright in the shower, or should I draw you a bath?" He asks lightly, eying you sidelong to watch your wobble.

"Just get me to the kitchen and leave me in front of the fridge," you answer, jaw loose around the words, fist shivering with all the strength you can muster to keep the towel cinched on your bony hips. "We'll call the cops and say we've been robbed. Let renter's insurance replace the groceries."

Steve actually utters a very distinct 'hah' to himself, like he's listening to a podcast and not his new, uh, whatever you are to him, now. Spouse, probably. "I think we have bacon in the freezer, and dry oats in the cupboards."

You gauge your encroaching migraine - you aren't seeing spots yet, and can ignore the gnaw in the pit of your stomach about as easily as you could any other physical discomfort.  "I can shower."

Doubtfully, Steve hums. "Can you stay _upright_ in the shower?"

"Yeah, soap," you assure nonsensically.  "It's the chemical kind.  We used it for the underground.  I got this." What you mean to say by that is, yes, you understand the importance of keeping a Heat contained even in the privacy of one's own homestead, because scents could drift and give away your position.

"Not my concern,"  Steve argues, but straightens from the drawers to watch you example your ability to, indeed, remain on your own two legs and even make a steady journey out into the hallway.

"Pffh, _you're_ concerned," you harp back, though you aren't talking direct sense, like a sleepwalker.  "I'm concerned.  Has it been seventy years since you've fixed a decent plate of bacon, too, or is my inherent southern finesse with all things porkmeats going to have outshine you in your own kitchen as well?"

Steve throws a wide-eyed indecision between surprise and offense at your departure, half dressed in fresh boxers and an arm through a worn gray undershirt with USAF printed on the back. He shakes his head before pulling the shirt over, at a rare loss for return snark, out of practice in a way. Bucky always kept him on his toes for conversational parry, and Tony was only good for a verbal spar under very specific conditions, the levity for which had all but disappeared between them, relationship still tenuous after the Winter Soldier's resurfacing.

But now you were here, designated consistency to your company, bitey and sarcastic in a transparent attempt to mask your fragility, and Steve without a map to navigate the sore spots from the solid foundation where he was allowed to joke back in kind.

Steve appears in the open bathroom doorway, leaning as if to hold the wall up.  "I have an extensive history with the morning tack fry, don't you worry."

"That sounds like you mean army chow, which we can both agree was never real food no matter the decade," you scorn, then, because the shower glass is actually clean and therefore transparent, "Turn around."

Reluctant to leave you to the wiles of gravity; "Dave, I've seen it."

You scoff, quoting false modesty - "Not in this light, you ain't.  I'm _butchered."_ Worse than that, you're leaking and slimy in a place you'll have to spelunk with your fingers in a variety of undignified poses, and some Meg secrets should just be kept out of the marriage.

Steve's composure twitches out of place, just for a glance, because you are actually butchered and his compassion can't handle the fact.  He turns, leans into the side of the door frame to cross his arms, ear turned back in case you beef it into the glass door or whatever.  "You're vain," he teases, almost too quietly to hear.

"Yeah, well, you're gay," you counter over the sound of the shower, stepping out of the loaned towel that still smells like Steve's after-rinse.  It's a petty bite-back, but you're not your most inspired right now.

"Gay?"  Steve grunts, because even in the grips of your hunger-brain it was a strange, immature provocation.

"Bent," you explain in the parlance of Steve's age, soaping up with the antiseptic sting of the deodorizer bar.  "Queered.  Nanced.  Sissified.  What did your generation call it?"  You're only picking a fight.  You don't actually think Captain Rogers is anything but 100% USDA beef cake, certified Meg-het'ro.  Bisexuality was still pretty iffy in the eyes of the State, and it was a long time since fucking a partner of your choice had been punishable by jail, but.

You're just picking a fight.  It used to work on Brodie, really got his dander up, and only sorta worked on you because it was true.  You were an actual fag, a bonefide queer, engine revved by Megsqueak and frilly aprons.

"What makes you say that," Steve counters conversationally, bored.  

"You suck cock like you're looking for a knot," you answer, half honestly.  Brodie went down on you but he never got after your dick like that (or ever), goddamn.

Steve considers the top of the door jamb, hums his assent.  "Well so long as you're not assuming on a prejudice.  I mean cocksucking, that's pretty immutable evidence, don't you think?"

You can't tell if he's being sarcastic, because duh DudeMegs had dicks, but...  "Rogers, if you are actually gay I will lose my shit," you promise past a mouthful of hot water, one hand wedged between your legs to brush the jellied trail of cooze and slick down your thigh, with another hand reached back to finger more free from the swollen pucker of your asshole.  "We can't the both of us be nonced, man," you rinse down in brushing sweeps, hair plastered over your eyes and ears.  "Or we won't get anything done.  I'll go on the shots and you'll get some sorta athletic girlfriend and there goes the nuclear family model."  You slap the shower off, blink out from the cracked door of the stall, the cherry red of your eyes large in your mirror image.  Were you always that goddamn _moe,_ or was this the price against your androgyny for a proper fucking?

Rogers' cheek is curled up in a smile as he hands a fresh towel back to you.  "When I was in school, it was considered very worldly and sophisticated to go with your own orientation.  Took a certain bravery of character, they'd say, like loving a mirror, which for a lot of people is still the hardest thing to do."

You laugh in multiverse, a wheeze really, and towel vigorously until your skin tingles.  You wrap the towel all the way up under your pits instead of around your waist for comedic effect, and also because your legs are your best asset, and also because you are lowkey avoidant of the reminder of Hilde's trespass against reproductive viability.  You do wobble, a little, nudging out against the back of Steve's elbow.  "Don't think I won't make you carry me before the day is out," you threaten, hooking an arm over Steve's shoulder when he refuses to budge.

Steve checks over his shoulder twice, doubt dimpling his brow.  "You've already been carried, remember?"  He shuffles free of the door, catching the fall of your arm from his shoulder to escort you down the hall to an apartment brightening with a murky city sunrise.

You have the savvy to blush, leaning a little hard into Steve's hold on the way to the kitchen.  Steve carried you to bed, no less, and you were too doped out on Heat to have kept that memory crisp.  You snag a folding chair from its lean against the wall and foot it open, readjust your towel down to your waist before slumping into the cold metal of the seat.  Steve passes into the kitchen, eyes still half on you in case you faint.

"Dandelions, huh."  You dip forward to nudge the dried flowers in their small consignment vase with the back of a knuckle, then stir the air with the flat of your fingertips like you're rewinding a record on its axle, flowerheads blooming back to a full fragrant yellow, fallen petals lifting to reseat into their stems, popping back into existence from the journey they must have made to the bin at the cleaning lady's sweep.  ",S that some metaphor about the inherent strength of the commoner, or nature's triumph through the cracks of modern sidewalks?"

Steve doesn't answer, watching intently from his place in front of the fridge, frozen sheaf of bacon in hand. 

You peek up, and sip a bead of leftover shower from your upper lip.

Steve closes his mouth, firms his jaw, and nods. "Can you do that with people, too?"

You snort, watching Steve turn his back on you to use the sink. "Naw. Not with 'conscious' life. You know what particle science says about consciousness, right?"

Steve leaves the bacon to thaw under the faucet, toes a bottom cabinet open to produce a cardboard cylinder of oats. "I might need a refresher."

You plant your elbows on the table, knees pressed together under the cooling terrycloth towel, knowing you should dress but weirdly stalled for a lack of instruction. "Mh, wull, couple'a years back they found out that these particles, see - like the kind that make up the atomic foundation of everything - well, there's two ways these charged particles could act, when recorded." You shift in your seat, too hungry to do this lecture justice. "Random, or ordered, and they only find out particles can even randomize because there's a hiccough in the setup to record them. They have this membrane that the particles leave a burn behind on, to track how the particles travel down this small corridor to the sounding flat. Somebody accidentally left the cameras off for one of the runs and it turned out the particles' burn path deviated severely from the patterns they usually followed when the cameras were being watched - some even reversed course and ended up in different chambers of the corridor, didn't even make it to the final flat."

Steve hums his acknowledgment. A pot clatters to a stovetop, water in with a stick of butter, for the oats.

"So they ran the experiment in more iterations, trying to determine what counts as cognizant order-keeping." you say, "Cameras on, recording to a playback, but nobody watching? Chaos. Cameras on, not recording, and nobody watching? Chaos. Cameras on, not recording, but people watching - order. Cameras on, not recording, but a dog or a jellyfish or a dolphin or some shit watching? Chaos."

Steve grunts softly, eyebrows wounded. "Not all complex life counts as conscious life? Not even a dog?"

You shrug, tug the edge of the table to stand, shuffle over to your duffel bag with a cautious eye toward the dude in the kitchen. "Yeah but animals that could recognize themselves in mirrors at a certain age - like elephants or monkeys, pinged order. Dolphins only didn't make the cut because they have to learn their object permanence - it's not something they can come to naturally if they're raised in isolation." You press a shirt into your face, cough. "But what that means for the reverse-course you just saw, well, I can't pull that stunt on conscious beings; not without splintering timelines."

"Which is bad," Steve guesses, tempering the heat on the gas range, cracking the oat canister to pretend interest elsewhere while you dress.

"It's... messy," you hazard, stepping into a dark pair of briefs. "And I wouldn't benefit from any changes, besides, because I belong to this timeline. Or I guess one of me wouldn't benefit." You pull the recently laundered red zip-hoodie on over bare skin, rustling your arms to feel cozy before tugging the zip carefully up mid-chest, careful of the sting all those hickeys left behind.

Steve plucks a cutting board from a drawer, manages to unstick the bacon from its plastic sleeve. He's lifting a fry pan from the inside of the oven - cast iron, seasoned - when you rejoin him with your hands in your hoodie pockets.

"Philosophically, it's a bad idea anyway. There's nothing that -" you stop, grunt softly from the back of your palette. "It just. It's all the same, in the end. The people you think you need to save are going to live on in their pasts no matter what, and all the problems you think you need to solve will just find some other way to come to fruition further down the timeline queue. Whatever trajectory _your_ timeline is on, that's not bound to change through a few hiccoughs of effort. If you can't rewrite a whole system then your individual saves and kills aren't going to matter."

"Hitler wasn't the cause of the war, he was just the figurehead," Steve agrees solemnly, tapping the handle of a spatula to catch it from its holding vase. "If you couldn't fix the oligarchy and nationalistic extremism, they'd have just found another Hitler to take his place."

"Right." You hover in, shoulders hunched forward, fists balled in your pockets for want to help out. "I might just be jaded because I'm staring down the barrel of infinity, but as far as I've learned there's no such thing as an individual so unique as to earn their own timeline split. There are infinite timelines where people live, die, or aren't even born - everything that we can imagine or want has already happened, already exists - just not to us, here, in this time, because we're place-holding for our own salsa mix of order and chaos."

Steve reaches around you for a ladle, palms the canister of oats over to press to your chest until you take it. "Sounds simple enough."

You face the stove, shake some oats in the simmering water, eyeballing the ratio. "I got harassed a lot by the brass when I was younger, all that 'rewrite the course of history' bullcrap, like they'd ever get any evidence of the changes even if I did hop my merry ass back to stab a Hitler or three." But Brodie had that NDA to keep you behind, a copyright on your labor, a safeguard.

"Did you? Just to example the futility?"

You trade oat can for ladle, shrugging your dissent. "Captain Rogers, I've never stabbed another person a day in my life."

Steve's eye flashes sidelong at you, smirk easing up, the pockets of ice in the stripped bacon crackling conversationally from the pan. "Except for yourself."

"Man," you drawl, caught out. The sizzle of the bacon begins to put a cloy in the air and a nausea rides in over your hunger, chases you away from the stove with your sleeve pressed over your mouth. "New city, I think I caught something airborne," you excuse, half-sitting back at the table but standing again as the urge to purge tugs through from your forehead to your stomach. You plunk the oat canister to the tabletop, then FLASH to the bathroom just in time to cough a throatful of stomach-hot water into the toilet, sinuses plugging up in irritation.

Steve, suddenly robbed of your company, cranes from the stove to inspect the house, then hears your upchuck and widens his eyes, intensely engaging his attention with the stovetop. If Houston had foisted you over so abruptly, almost like he needed to get you in ahead of some deadline, had been spurred by an unexpected event... and you getting that shot and all and nosediving immediately into the Heat that suppressant should have staved off - well, Steve doesn't waste his breath on the question of it, just slaps the stove off, digs a half-gone box of graham crackers from a cupboard and joins you in the bathroom. 

"Stress can cause all kinds of upsets," Steve remind gently from the bathroom door, kneeling to match your level, testing the air for some chemical hint.

"Think it's just the skipped meal," you hazard, already over the wave of disgust, glad again to smell the bacon in the air around Steve's arrival, stomach growling.

Steve nudges the box of crackers at your knee, stands slowly. "I'll ask Sam to bring some provisions."

You huff a not-laugh. 'Provisions'. Gawd. "Hats off to Sam." Then, because it doesn't seem like Steve is about to leave and you don't want the breakfast to burn, you dig blindly down into the cracker box to finger the waxpaper open and produce a bland brown square of carbs between your fingers.

Steve nods, arms crossed. "Make a list of what you need, we can get you squared."

You grunt a yeah around your nibble, eyes averting from the attention, feeling a little _challenged,_ somehow, stuck on your knees hugging the toilet. "Something burning?" You lie, hinting.

Steve's elbow jerks out of place and he checks back into the hall, frowning. "Shouldn't be. I shut the stove off." He returns to sentry in the bathroom doorway, assessing you head to toe and back to head again. "Since John is due in this afternoon, is there anything - uh -" Steve exhales, rubs the back of his head. "Any _one_ else you'd like to mention? That Alpha, maybe, who was recently in your life?"

You still, chewed wad of graham cracker going thick down the back of your throat.

"Someone else you could invite to the Pack?"

The laugh that blurts out turns into a single hack of a cough, and you stifle your burp of returned nausea with the back of your wrist. You shake your head, mute, eyes glassy.

"Even if you couldn't -" Steve's heel tamps in place, arms crossed, jaw set. "Couldn't um, invite them. We'll need to know who it is before they go to the papers about it, at least."

"Ain't goin' to no papers," you quietly warn, smiling over your wrist, elbow on toilet rim and graham clutched loosely between your knuckles like a cigarette. "Don't you worry nothing about that, Captain. Brodie squared it." Boy did he ever. You try not to laugh again, stomach and throat too raw to breathe with.

Steve wipes the corner of his mouth with his thumb, crouches down to meet you eye-level again, hip braced against the door frame.

You try to wave him off, sobering from your introspection. "It was just a convenience thing, anyway."

Steve chuffs his hands together, eyebrows up. "A support professional?"

"Yeah," you lie, nod returned of its vigor, glad for the tidy untruth. "Head office had to keep the Striders in line; you know how it goes."

Steve nods, once, exhaling carefully. "Okay." He stands, filling the doorway again. "I trust you." But he says it like a threat, like he's warning you that his trust is yours to mishandle, to lose or keep.

You roll a shoulder, despondent, take a bite of graham for the excuse to flash your teeth.

A curl flinches through Steve's nose, and he tries again - "I trust you to handle your own personal life, to your own discretion."

"Hoh!" Your eyes widen, grin growing around the next bite of cracker. ",S that permission to run around all extra-marital? Just keep it outta the view of the Press, 'n that?" And, at Steve's total lack of expression - "Kidding, dude, nobody has the time for that."

Steve exhales, allowing you a tight facsimile of a smile. "Or the energy."

"Or the _funds,"_ you add, mulishly. "Though I guess that's going to be less of a problem, now."

Drawing some invisible decision, Steve stands forward, offers a hand down. "We're going to make the papers enough when John joins the team. Multi-Meg households have gone out of style since I've been in the ice."

You take the hand, scoop the cracker box under your arm in the stand. "Fewer 'Megs to go around, nowadays."

Steve's brow pinches the way it does when he's been reminded of a modern tragedy. "Yeah. Yeah, there are."

You tilt your head, an accession. "Probably why we lost the vote. Majority rule."

Steve tucks you back up against the sink counter, fishes a comb out of a drawer near your hip.  He cards your hair back out of your eyes, an errant grooming caress, pretty standard hands-on Household maintenance that still makes your grin wobble up like you're embarrassed for him.  Brodie would have just knocked you over the head and told you so on the lost visibility from leaving hair in your eyes.

You say, "Okay, _mom,_ can we go now?"

An uninvolved sadness passes through the air, and Steve stalls his hands on either side of your face, then rubs his wrists in and down, the Introduction you two never got around to on the assumption that you didn't like it.

Your eyes go all soft and lost, because Steve smells like apples and you still don't know what to do with that fact, if that's even supposed to _mean_ anything, and all those hormones got their claws sunk in you -

"Of the two of us who could be -" Steve stops, chest wide with a slow inhale, setting the comb aside so he can pull the Intro down across your shoulders, up under your arms, settling along your waist. Of the two of you who could be 'mom' - "Nevermind. How do you take your bacon? Chewy, or burnt?" He lightly claps the side of your flank, departs the bathroom.

"Yes," you answer, earning a snort from the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♦ comments so far:
> 
> what's-with-the-live-updates: ehh, well, i suppose i'd rather show how bad first drafts are and inspire others to never give up improving, even if they've already published something that wasn't polished or needs clarification and editing. i go through 7+ drafts before i put something up in my main acct, and it often STILL needs reworking after that, so i'd rather skip the grueling edits for the nonsense project in the nonsense project account, eheh
> 
> ALL OF THE ENCOURAGEMENT: aaaaaah thank you =w=  
> i always appreciate being compared to whiny whiteboy authors; my prose is really that audacious, yes, and may we all learn to write with such bullet-proof confidence amen
> 
> and, as always, this is a WIP, so chapters will seem disjointed or unfinished until the tag is removed and chapter fill complete. thanks for reading through despite this, and any questions will be answered in the next chapter update. :)


	10. I : X

Your name is ~~SCP0413~~ HOUSTON, and today you think you could be THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, but don't know your real age from a literal hole in the ground.

The bunker was a good find - canned food that you have to open with your BROEKEN SORD, a back-grid power reserve and an OLD BUT TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED thoroughfare console on its own closed system that you get to work away at between long sleeps.  You'd only expected to find shelter in these southern winter woodlands, maybe a comfortable cot and at least a working spigot - but here you also find OLD GUNS and SICK-ASS UNIFORMS cached away, and a reclining mechanical chair hulked out with all sorts of surgical cyborganics.

This is but one of many Project-X wayfare stations scattered throughout the world, lost to the chaos of several wars, those who would know its location and use either dead or asleep.  It only takes you a week to configure the structural memory build in HYDRA's leftover equipment, intent on queering the software to your own ends, to turn a part of yourself over to its own parse.

"Happy birthday to us," you croak in the dim blue light of console artifice, a skinny grease-mark of a kid in stolen hobo clothes that smell like roadkill, and launch the mapping sequence.

* * *

You are FIFTEEN YEARS OLD (probably) when you revisit that bunker and almost don't recognize the place, an albino toddler tucked against your breathless ribs inside your NICE SILK-PRINT SHIRT, blood all down the side of your face, SORD in hand.  "Hal," you plead at the sealed bunker entrance underneath all that viny overgrowth, and the brain-ghost you trapped in that closed system answers with a yawning sigh of sliding metal door.

* * *

Your name is ~~HOUSTON~~ BRODERICK and you are SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD the day Hal slips his shades to go rogue.

Downhill from the highway curb on which you parked The Truck, Professor Harley's sprawling laboratory and half the forested property is in flames, CHITINOUS ENEMIES crawling out from the portals blooming in the wake of Hal's total system override.  This is the day the Hellportal problem spreads out under the tex-mex border; this is the day the State decides it needs a soldier who can flash-step more than it needs another prisoner rotting away in some SHIELD bunker somewhere.

 _They were always going to see you as the enemy,_  Hal argues calmly, an orange scroll in your Smart Shades.  _Now they have to make you their hero._

* * *

Your name is ~~BRODERICK~~ BRODIE and you are THIRTY FOUR YEARS OLD the day HAL overtakes your organic husk. 

The small crawling horde of nano-receivers had been ZOLA'S blueprints, hobbled together off whatever reaches of alien sub-web Zola had been trawling before he met HAL, who never once suspected Zola of intent to possess you right alongside him.  HAL (brainghost cobbled off decayed bunker tech) had been cooling his heels in your SMART SHADES as lifelong punishment for his GRAVE TRESPASS against G-man Harley (if not the general safety of the Earth), subdued to a read-only presence in the World Wide Web, locked in code to do nothing but respond in a chatting program built specifically to cage him.

With Dave grown and seen to his own career and friendships, and you absorbed in your portalizing projects for the next grueling sentence of State service (with G-man Harley no less, which you even sorta looked forward to); Hal had found himself alone to his own echo, festering in his cage, dismissed as a cheap artifice just spitting words back in a mindlessly recycled apery, a joke, a ventriloquism.

So Hal found a collaborator on the DARK WEB, ordered the nanotech through Arnim's webwork of ANONYMOUS BLACKMARKET ENGINEERS, and convinced Dave to sign for the package when it arrived in the apartment building lobby.  The nanos crept out of their package and in through your ear as you slept; Hal primed to leap-frog the wi-fi into your physical brain scaffolding, to reclaim the body he had lost when you'd mapped him from yourself in that bunker all those years ago; when you made of him an inorganic immortal reduced down to information retrieval and correspondence AI, a tortured sort of receptionist.

You'd been thirteen, suffering your Alpha ascension alone but for your robots, desperate to have another of whatever it was you were in the world, desperate to have a mind as all-reaching as yours with which to communicate, desperate for connection.  You made Hal from the brain of a persecuted child in the grips of terror and despair, emotionally frozen to that point in time and infinitely, dangerously intelligent.

ZOLA had pre-loaded himself into the nanotech as chopped code, unrecognizable until all parts could make up the whole, and finished assembly about the same time HAL's uplink finished swapping your sleeping brain-structure back into the SmartShades there on the bedside table - which he was escaping, a seamless leapfrog and ZOLA none the wiser.

You wake to the static chaos of the digital realm quite aware that your body cannot be reached by the nerve-to-brain signal which would normally ferry the info in from the physical world, paralyzed and breathless, recognizing the digital framework to which you'd been banished only because you were the one who invented the parsing language whole-cloth.  The safeguards that had so shielded the rest of the world from Hal's malfeasance while he was trapped in the SmartShades - well, you knew the passcodes to those, didn't you?  So by the time ZOLA crushes the SmartShades under his (your) bootheel, an act that would have surely been the end of you - you've escaped, again, to the endless resonating infinity of the wireless fidelity webs reaching the world over.

(Hal assumes you are dead; is properly mortified by this, but only perhaps because that could have easily been him, had he never collaborated with ZOLA in the first place.  You do not know this, because you are no longer in your organic brain, in your organic body; and Hal's waking introduction to a return to flesh is Arnim Zola's exemplary molestation of the kid Hal never assumed you were fucking.)

The thing about living on in the internet, however, is there are limits - you're largely blind, deaf, mute.  You can't navigate so much as just _exist,_ suspended.  Your organic brain structure doesn't have the simplified mapping to process sound from microphones, and you don't have ears - nor eyes, even if you could somehow read the screens you pass through in a flicker, a static snow.  You're a ghost, an abstraction, a communication of memory and feeling without a medium to channel you, and your electronic escape is a chaotic kind of hell.  The shades had been livable for Hal, because you had built and programmed them, so he (and you) understood their wetworking.  Now you had to familiarize yourself with simplified computer engineering, deaf blind and dumb, starting from the basic binaries; off, on; one, zero.

* * *

It takes you a little over a week to advance to half-operable comprehension of your surroundings.  The build for your new engine of thought is intensive, and you're about a decade out of practise with mainstream Terran code; it's a frustrating three days further yet until you realize you've landed in a chinese server, and that's why you can't read any goddamn thing, but you find a familiar hash map and piggyback to the United States to try to find out what the fuck is going on in your Household under Hal's undoubtedly absurd rule, worried about Dave and the fact that you never let Hal in on the full intimacy of your coupling.

There might be some hurt feelings to address, if Dave doesn't outright ollie the fuck outie.  Worse, you think, Hal being you at the height of your most selfish; Dave might find a better partner in him, kindred in goals.  Hal was brash, and vengeful, and despised authority.  If Dave wanted to defy the State, Hal wouldn't balk to support him.

You gather the final piece of code into yourself once you make figurative landfall back on American soil, and are suddenly awake, full faculty nav board, abstraction drawn into realized object permanence, seated in the whole of your digital actualization.  You can read, you can listen, you can translate binary into image, you can plug things into your new, infinite memory - fact and fiction deliriously mixed, because you are robbed of your subjectivity, because this is the only reality you have, now.

There are still limits.  You are still navigating without a map, stumbling on servers with no way to pinpoint any specific destination - and you can't see or hear the things you need to see and hear to find out about Hal's trajectory, entirely unawares of his collaboration with ZOLA.  And you know for damn sure that your household is inaccessible - that even if you know the passcodes to get in and out, the digital address was guarded by a thick wall of proxy. You're stuck, until very suddenly you aren't, clued in on a _very_ familiar address, and FRIDAY welcomes you into Stark Industries' civilian-faced servers with open arms. The official Stark Industries system is, of course, its own closed web, but FRIDAY helpfully unpieces the path to your Household's physical address, taking an In through the GPS mappage that you had neither considered nor assumed yourself capable of travelling.

You arrive in the piece of equipment hooked in to your Household network with the highest memory cache, which happens to be Sawtooth, and now seated in this physical presence are robbed anew of your ability to see or hear or parse, because your bots use their own language of code and your brain mapping is still running on Earthian web browser.  You know only as much as Saw knows; which is that it has been two (2) weeks since you were kicked from your body, and Saw is near Dave, and rooftop protocol has been engaged.

You assume that Hal is the Alpha on the way up to the roof (?) with Dave, and that you're in your own Homestead, not a handful of borders upstate; and you take it on yourself to try and disable Dave so you can beat Hal's ass, confident that Hal's living apart from having a physical form would have adequately atrophied his mastery of fighting - and, if you can get Dave hurt enough, that would be another blow against Hal's concentration, the body that was yours much susceptible to Omegan distress.

Your bots could always FLASH-STEP, of course - who better to go dashing after a wily toddler Dave - but their purpose was ever and always support, defense and companionship, not sparring, not fighting, not battle.  You retired their flash-step at the first whisper of patent acquisition from the State, and the clones General Cutter production-funded back in '06 were lamed dolls in comparison, nothing more than walking bombs, wastes of fuel.  You don't know why Squarewave detonated. You didn't even know Square was there, so mutilated was his code, ARNIM's contribution to his own assassination plans. You don't know what takes you out mid whoop-ass on Dave, either, but FRIDAY again draws you safely up into her systems, alerts the 'Vision' uplink and, well.

Your name is ~~SAWTOOTH~~  BRODERICK STRIDER, and the first thing Tony Stark returns to your charred, makeshift chassis is the gift of sight, Saw's single red tracking eyeball flickering alight beneath the cracked triangle of his dope-ass shades.


	11. A C T . I I

### in the middle of the pouring rain

> _Seasons change with the scenery,_  
>  _weaving time in a tapestry_  
>  _Won’t you stop and remember me_  
>  _at any convenient time?_
> 
> _Funny how my memory skips_  
>  _looking over manuscripts_  
>  _of unpublished rhyme,_  
>  _drinking my vodka and lime_
> 
> _I look around; leaves are brown_  
>  _and the sky is a hazy shade of winter_
> 
> \- Paul Simon

In 1936 the Public House is still a new building (with hot water plumbing and all), but somehow manages to carry the sad saggy air of a structure dilapidated beyond its time, sickness and death in its walls, the eerie silence of its tenements rattled only by the errant hallway cough or low wail of muffled despair. Nobody who lives in the Public House does so voluntarily, and you can't wait to move STEVE out, as soon as you can find walls as warm or plumbing as consistent or rent as cheap.

Your name is ~~JAMES BUCHANAN~~ BUCKY BARNES, able-bodied [grocer coolie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolie), vim and vinegar Brooklyn Boy, church hall pianist, and you are SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD when you finally manage to cram your knot into someone, courtesy the novel privacy of STEVE'S Public House apartment. You're walking your date down the narrow metal stairs when you pass an open window of the apartments opposite the alley, a LANKY ALBINO GUY sat sideways with a leg dangling out against the brick, smoking sweet tobacco with his suspenders down like he was the one who'd just had a go.

"Hey," THE ALBINO greets, and your date startles.

"Hey yourself," you growl, over-protective in your youth. "And mind ya own."

[ ]

[ ]

[ ]

"Steve fucked," you protest across the bamboo table, arm thrown back to support your weight against the back of your chair, stretched out drunk and drowning in the peace of the evening. Just past the perimeter of the open-air beachfront bar, the wreckage of your mission smoulders, a gnarled heap of warped metal fronting a long crash line of rubble. Your name is CAPTAIN ~~AMERICA~~ BARNES, first Avenger, latest Avenger, drunkest Avenger.

"Oh he _did not,"_ Stark argues, laughing, red beneath his tan. "You have to say that, Cap, you're the best friend." 

Steve hums agreement from behind his newspaper, legs crossed in Natasya's lap, the hammock they share swaying in the warm breeze, the ocean tide out there in the dark hushing your conversation.

You throw a tea towel at the flat of Rogers' paper, crumpling it against his chest. "I didn't fuck even half as much as the _art students_ this dweeb ran around town with. Not half as much, many, or in nearly that variety, the bunch of Greeks."

Tony grimaces. "Why not? I thought the books said you were the dance-hall Casanova of Clinton Street."

You wheeze. "Why not, because my Ma woulda killed me dead coming home smelling like quim, that's why not. You do not know scary until you know a Roman Catholic Alpha-Mater from the Bronx."

Thor puzzles from the wicker chaise that had sagged alarmingly under his drunken sprawl, "I thought there were Greeks in this tale? Or are there Romans, too?"

You wave your hand, head shaking. "Steve fucked. I hate that people think he didn't, think that nobody in the past was fucking; each generation thinks it invented sex, nobody else before them was ever bored enough or poor enough to fuck as a recreational, nope, buncha buttoned-up old grandpas, us."

"How come Rogers got away with it?" Tony says, drink-swollen eyes narrowed. "How come you got away with it, Steve, wasn't your mom an Alpha, too?"

Steve drapes the tea towel over the hammock edge and rights his newspaper, angled now so he can address the table unobscured. "My Ma was Protestant. And dead." He flicks the paper straight. "And I had a place of my own, so." He shrugs, the glint in his eyes opposing the frown he was trying to keep. "Bucky got up to some boot-knocking, too, don't let him lie to you."

"I copped to that already," you dismiss, waving your hand as if to shoo a fly.

Tony shakes his head as if dodging that same fly. "I'm sorry, can we revisit the fact Steve Rogers just made a _dead mother_ joke?" He sits back, blinking widely. 

You slam your palms against the table, jarring glasses, imploring Tony with the open despair of someone too long burdened by the weight of a secret. "Yeah, _this_ is what I got to grow up with. This -" you level an accusatory finger at Steve, who is sharing dark amusement with the assassin laid opposite, "This _scary blisterfuck_ throwing himself at other Alphas twice his - twice MY size, dropping dead mother jokes at the breakfast table _in front of his ailing mother,_ and she all for it, of course," you prop your elbows out, mime a feminine grab for the nearest beer, "Yes and those millions he was going to inherit, she'd better watch her cups or he'll away to India to squander the fortune hunting elephants!" You take a breath. The Rogers household had always been your favorite for just these reasons, but by God, you had stories, and the history books just pissed you right off, for all their sterility.

The beer goes down a little hard, too cold against the lump swelling in your throat. Jesus Christ, you were so in love, and you'd lost him for so long, and now he was here, right here in front of you, ignoring your bullshit just like old times.

Tony twists his chair wholesale to face Steve fully now. "So where is _that guy?_ I wanna hang out with him."

",That guy' _had_ to be cynical," Steve answers like he'd had the bullet loaded in the chamber since the start of this, waiting to defend himself. "That guy didn't have it very good, so he had to live like he had more than most, like he was taller than anyone, like he was well-heeled and invincible and the hottest to trot. Coulda dropped dead from taking the stairs too quick or eating the wrong lunch, so," Steve glances up, the look that means he's realized something, then tugs the newspaper back between himself and the table. "He had to live like he was you, Stark."

There is an appropriately awed silence, which Tony breaks - "But you actually are that guy, now."

"And?" you growl miserably into your beer, then set it carefully aside. "He still throws himself at problems twice his size. Still makes dead mom jokes. Still an unrepentantly generous asshole with all the socially-progressive pariahship of the goddamn canvas carnies who peopled him."

"Hey," Steve growls, a toothless warning from behind the paper. He turns the page, and says no more.

You level a flat palm Steve's way, staring Tony down, then shift to make room for Bruce, who pulls a chair aside to start gathering empty bottles to a tray.

"Let a server do that," Tony gripes, flapping his cupped fingers.

"All the servers have gone home for the night," Bruce admits gently, and for a brief and startling moment you're reminded of your father, though your Pops was 'Meg through and through and Bruce was only ever as duffy as a Beta could be.

"So what's your excuse," Tony raises his voice, addressing Steve. "If all that's the same, about you, why aren't you the Party-Steve we should all get to know and love."

The sway of the hammock doesn't hitch, but Steve turns the newspaper page and you see the tiki-lamp light glint off his metal forearm and are stabbed through with guilt. 

"I am neither as poor nor as bored as I was in my college days, Anthony." Steve folds the paper aside, eyebrows up but lashes down the way he did when he was disappointed in himself. "And none of us can afford to be cynical. Not any more."

Thor speaks up, groggy as if waking, "It would go unsaid, then, that none of us are what we once were, and are the stronger for it. Stark, do you still idle in the beds of strangers? Or has your time demanded certain sacrifices of leisure?"

"I'm _married,"_ Tony hisses, but leaves the insult off the end of his protest. "So yeah, sometimes, I still get to fuck. That's called growing up."

You scoff. You can't help it. "Maybe... and hear me out here, Tony," you drawl, blinking heavily, contemplating the ceiling just to ease the ache in your neck. "Maybe say that thing you just said, word for word, just say it again, but slower."

Steve continues, grin struggling to break through his consternation, "and then go soak your head."

A waiter saunters in with a bussing tray balanced over his shoulder, tall and willowy and, startlingly, albino. He catches your scrutiny of the scars down his forearms and grins, lips shut, dropping a wink from behind the tray before he takes his leave. You thought the staff all went home.

"Is it just me," Tony starts, squinting at the swinging kitchen door. "Or was that kid a Megan."

[ ]

[ ]

[ ]

Steve lays out a camping bag whenever you stay over in the PUBLIC HOUSE apartment, in lieu of the couch that had yet to ship in from the estate sale, and this bag is now set open picnic style in the middle of the narrow sitting room, Steve half on to keep his stomach warm while you both lounge around listening to the radio in the dim flicker of the cheap oil lamp, since the electricity was out on a delinquent bill.

"Ring your Ma," Steve husks from over his comic book, bony elbows propped on the lacquered floorboards, three beers deep from the metal tub of melting ice he swore he'd use to wash up tomorrow so you should probably stop tossing the empties back in (you remind him for the umpteenth time that he had a faucet in the kitchenette, now, and a hot tap in the communal water closet down that floor's hall too, no need to recycle tub ice, but Steve just wants to boss you about something, in that sorta mood, prickly pre-rut looking for a fight you're too dopey to give him).

You leave to ring your ma, standing out in the lobby floor hall in your skivs because the summer heat had gone and made woolen trousers unbearable. 

Ma's okay with you keeping vigil at Steve's new place, trying times and all, but doesn't want either of you to get too drunk and bother the neighboring invalids and you promise you've had the last of the night's beers with your dinner, which is a lie that comes easier over the phone, when she can't smell the deceit. 

You also promise you'll be back tomorrow to help Pops with the twins, but you won't come home all weekend and when you show up late for church on Wednesday your Ma will have your suitcase on the stoop and nothing so maternal as a smack or a hug, only a cold, dignified Alpha-to-Alpha nod; but you don't know that yet, so you lay it on thick, how she's the Most, and you kiss the receiver and promise to give Steve a buss goodnight for her, both cheeks because both parents were with God now.

You do as you're asked when you get back up to Steve's; you bolt the apartment door behind you, settle down to your elbows and knees over Steve's much slighter body and try to buss both cheeks from there, missing at his irritated squirm, mouth grazing his ear, temple, jaw. You settle on the salt-sweat tang and apple cider at the side of Steve's graceful, birdy neck, your dick gone heavy and hot against your thigh from the smell of his fever, the tangy electricity of his Rood.

Your dates were fun people, lively and interesting and interested, but they never did this to you, never walloped you over the head with want the way Steve did, and he was Alpha and all, small and fierce and goddamn beautiful, heartbreak gorgeous, a pale garden statue of some avatar of famine.

"Get bent, Barnes," Steve cusses, and struggles to his elbows and knees as if to scarper, gluing himself right up into the cage of your embrace. "Unh," he moans, forehead thunking down against the floor, boneless as your mouth pulls across the back of his neck.

You meant it as a joke; you meant to get smacked, kicked away, wrestled down and defeated - you meant to topple under Steve, show your neck, ease his Rood a little, cushion any further perusal of that comic book, make of yourself a furniture for all those bony edges no amount of gymside boxing could round out. You meant to abdicate, but Steve moans and turns to jelly in your arms and this hets you up, digs your hips forward and curls your arms in.

You quash a wheeze out of Steve and jolt to your elbows again, knocking the floor with a muffle of sleeping bag.

"Shh," Steve hisses, pushing up and out from under you in a deft scramble, catching his breath. "You know how it sounds like bowling pins upstairs, and that's just the cat running around." He dusts himself down, suspenders and undershirt, trousers rolled up because they're new and he hadn't got around to tailoring them yet. "Folks down in four will think we're being robbed." He's not wheezing too hard, which is a relief, but the scare had gone and wilted your arousal pretty effectively.

You sink a little more gracefully to your hips, then tip yourself over to your back, watching Steve straighten the room from dinner. "I kinda miss the old place," you lament quietly, reluctant to remind Steve of his loss. "That shipping freighter used to go right by your window, rattle the whole joint. Gave us ten minutes of noise to make, didn't it?"

Steve scoffs, fever-flush, and settles near your hip to crack a new beer open, toe the next page of his comic over. "This bed doesn't squeak. It's new."

You frown. "It's also tiny. I'll take rusted springs over cramping up or falling off, any day."

Steve frowns too in the flicker of the skint lamp, thumbs the mouth of the beer bottle. "Remember that cartoon that's going around, with the Oughtie and her small Ace? How she's all big and overbearing and that poor Ace is just so short and wimpy and meek?"

"Are you calling me fat," you razz, hooking your arm around Steve's waist to pull him in, pull him down, careful not to squash this time.

Steve shrugs. "What if it weren't so funny, is all. What if some guy like me found an Oughtie, a really swell gal, and she was just, uh, bigger than most." He shakes his head. "He'd be a real fink to turn her down, wouldn't he? Because he's not - because of how it would look, what other people might say."

You cough, nonplussed. "You'd be a fink if you took a Megan on to live in this shithole, is what you'd be." You chuff your hand up Steve's arm, lightly wring his bicep, indian burn. "Just wait until I get that house out in the country, you can woo all the fat Megs you wanna."

"He's not fat," Steve admits, half a whisper.

You roll to your hip, bump Steve's shoulder with your own.

Steve looks guilty, avoids eye contact, and the shrug won't leave his shoulders. "He's taller than you and real uh, keen, I guess. And he's... monied." Steve shifts his weight, elbows on knees. "I didn't know that at first, but that's one problem solved." His voice lowers, cautious. "He smells like apples, Buck. I think you'd really get on."

"Is this a patron," you press, suspicious now. "From that goddamn ferry club."

Steve nods, shoulders easing. "He's gotta pass your vote, first. But JC already waived permission, and Buck, his dowry would solve so much for us, we could go to the country; we could go to the country _in France,_ christ sake -"

"Not that you don't deserve it," you interrupt, wary. "I'm not saying you don't deserve some tall rich Meg putting the moves on, I'm not saying that." You hug your knees similarly, the two of you islands in the rumple sea of the camping bag. "You're talented and smart and you work hard, and anybody with eyes can see you're gonna give someone the prettiest babies some day -"

"But," Steve leads, holding his breath.

"But in my experience, tall rich *anything* is gonna be nothing but trouble, and you've known this Ought for, what, how long? Yesterday? Last week? You really wanna start a house right out of school like this? Weren't we gonna travel?"

Steve deflates, relief evident. "You're right. This is... weird. And untimely." He shrugs again, and the hard lines of his usual fronting stoicism soften. "He just made me feel like, I dunno, like I was bigger somehow. Like you make me feel like I'm taller than I really am, sometimes, how you defer and move around me and all that." He turns sharply, inspired, "But you're gonna meet him, right? Come with me this weekend, we'll hop the boat and JC can introduce you. He's really something, Buck."

You snuffle, draw your thumb across your mouth. "And what's the name of this 'real something'."

"Oh, uh," And Steve's nose does that funny wrinkle right between his eyes as if he's seeing something in the distance, remembering but doubting himself. "David. Under House [Leyendecker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._Leyendecker)."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lovely n sad: aldkjfalkdjfakhfalhdlhkafjkd thank you hahaha it updates awkwardly but polishes off just fine i think!
> 
> who what where: yyyyeah actually i only have glancing ABO universe lore FROM fanfiction, and even then only from HS and MCU fanfic (and, much earlier, Inception fanfic on LJ), so you're going to see some tropes and characterizations revisited, here. i've been looking for a specific ABO HS fic that has a jade who smells like pineapples, so i can fave it, but i'm scared it was either a FF.net relic or tumblr fic or got baleeted or something. this fic is basically a hang off the premise of all the HS ABO i've read so far, so i owe that author a lot!
> 
> update style is... not great, i know, but the part i loved about most of the ABO i've read so far was its journal/diary format, sort of plodding along the daily life drudgery with all those insignificant details. it might be boring as like a storytelling metric but that kind of endless step-by-step moment tension is exactly the kind my brain eats right up, so - 
> 
> hopefully it won't take too long for events of significance to introduce themselves and resolve, but i've done the whole weekly update/serial chapter routine before and tbh i'd rather take my time and write semi-boring things (that i can hack at until it's interesting) than deal with the compulsive popcorn crowd again, ugh. put your FOMO aside and dig deep into the archives of prehistoric fandom, you won't be disappoint.
> 
> estimated-deadline-question: uhwell, i've actually only finished a single fanfiction in my whole entire life, but left its sequel half undone. maybe this fic will be the fic to break the pattern, but i'm old and set in my ways and have a dayjob and an illustration side-gig and a meaningful romantic relationship to attend in my spare time, haha
> 
> get a sheet of graphing paper and label the horizontal axis each square 1-24, then fill in the vertical axis squares with every month each year in your life so far. i used three marker colors for artistic effect. then count out how many more little squares it'll take to get you to 90-100 years of age, and you'll have a visual representation of how much time in your life is left, that can be filled in one square for every month that passes. when i'm not writing fanfiction, i'm reading nonfiction articles on the dystopian state into which my country has fallen, playing video games or watching cartoons to convince myself i'm flourishing under captialistic abuse and constant housing insecurity, and ticking off another square on the countdown.
> 
> i write fanfiction because my skullmeat likes to circle escapist drains when distressed. i write GROSS fanfiction with superdense premises because stephen king can get away with worse. 
> 
> get regular sleep. eat a vegetable. stay hydrated. die for your convictions but don't make them anyone else's problem. do things that make you happy with whatever time you DON'T have to waste on the illusion of meaningful contribution to society, we're all in this garbagefire together.


	12. II : II

Your name is ~~CAPTAIN AMERICA~~ STEVE ROGERS, First Avenger, All-American Hero, Head of House; and you have taken on an Oughtie in the name of Earth's preservation. You expected to take an Ought for any number of reasons - duty to some poor abandoned thing, responsibility to your country and your Pack, a rescue of some friend's Widow.  You hadn't considered taking an Oughtie as a _martial_ measure, as a custodial sentence to safeguard the public from powers unthinkable and motives unknown.  SHIELD was built on a history of such enrollment, you know, but the practice smacks especially insidious when it's wrapped up in the biological vulnerabilities of someone who had been systematically isolated, left to fester alone in his ferality to better guarantee his service to the State. 

Dave is resting now in your SMALL APARTMENT BEDROOM, a lanky ghost of a 'Meg who had taken the liberty to wrap himself up in your bedding, all the leftover smell of breakfast threaded in with the fresh apple tang of his triggered Heat.  Anthony had pitched Dave's bid to you as some lighthearted trial-by error woo, listing all of Dave's Household skills, his professional use to the Avengers, the backup plan if the sparks didn't exactly fly between you - and you'd agreed by the 'professional use to the Avengers' line, full confidence in your team to pick up any romantic slack that should fall; full confidence in Anthony's playboy irresponsibility to see him and Pepper settled down to get a brood of their own from the bid should you fail to connect.

But Anthony's scoffing disregard for the gravity of a chronic feral condition sealed your allegiance to the match.  Tony was as privileged as most of his generation, spared the horrors that had been the weaponization of feral breaks within the Armed Services, harbored from the cultural ignorance of your time, that which had left so many impoverished working-class peoples to feral vulnerability in the first place.  You weren't taking David on for your own sake, no - you were taking David on to spare your team the heartbreak, spare the rest of the world the danger, spare Dave.

And sure, feral 'Megs didn't attack people on the whims of their Break, that's not what you were worried about - but the chronically afflicted were doomed to a randomized storm of impulse, a wanton infidelity, an impermanence of allegiance, and the Avengers couldn't afford to let Dave remain susceptible to any double agent within SHIELD ranks - not now, not after Project Insight.  And to return David to the Auction was unthinkable - who knew where HYDRA lurked, who was under their influence, what kind of weapon they'd make of this commandable Godling. It was amazing Houston had held onto Dave as long as he had, kept him from the prying grasp of the power-hungry, the megalomaniacal hiding behind their governing offices, their wealth, their careers.

Dave's not thrilled about your decision overall, you can tell.  He's smart enough to know when he's being pandered to, and direct enough to ask that you not; accepting your explanation (excuse) for the bonding bite with a jaded shrug.  If he'd had a professional interventionist, of course he was used to dispassionate coupling ('not slow' he'd insisted, terrified of the discomfort of an unanswered Heat); so your Binding to him was just a continuation of that, a stability even if it wasn't a romance.

Dave Strider is polite, at least, though not exactly in the way the Auction Bid had suggested - a generosity of character lurks behind his insults, and he's happy to help in the kitchen, diligent in the practicalities of cohabitation that makes you wonder just what kind of guardian Houston ever was to him, exactly, family or authority?  And Dave is neatly compartmentalized of his emotions when he speaks, monotone disaffection in his southern drawl, give or take a desperate plea at the height of hormonal sabotage.  He's funny, you think; but funny the way Anthony is funny, in a way that can wound others, defend himself.

You rub the spot on the side of your neck where a bruise might have lingered were it not for your metabolized healing, shutting the tap for the sink full of soaking dishes. Dave bites like an Ace, like he can't help it, brought to the heat of a moment to answer some compulsion of ownership, of rank posturing. Which speaks to his lifestyle, at least, stoically independent and queer as he was.  You lean over the steam of the full sink, exhale, dare a glance toward the bedroom hall again.

You have to face the lingering possibility that Dave might be pregnant, too - false as the Heat most likely was, unexpected, off-schedule, soured with distress.  Dave could just be pregnant, chemically disrupted by that suppressant he so confidently requested; and left alone to integrate into a Household of strangers, not even his brother (not brother?) to pass him off in ceremony. You step carefully further down the short dark hall until you can hear Dave snoring quietly under the heap of blankets in your rarely-used four-post, a purr that betrays his Meganhood.

You claim another silent step to peer through the open doorway, and the only visible hint of an occupant under the pile of bedding is the pale scythe of a bare arm curled between displaced pillows, neatly nicked and scarred and veined in blue.

In any other life you might have found Dave Strider on the front of magazines, or up on the silver screen, unmarred by battle, fatter in all the right places, mesmerizing audiences with that smoky drawl of his, a modern-day Lauren Bacall with the same charms and sleepy GREEN EYES.  You're struck a little discordantly with how 'lucky' this all comes off - some beautiful Megan set up by personal disaster to _need_ your immediate coupling, powerful and confident and yours to Command.  You can't talk this situation down without insulting Dave, so you don't; but you aren't happy with the overall decision of the match, either, sad for a world that's slipped so far from grace in the lifetime you've been away from it, sad for the people that never make it back from battle even if they survive to return home, sad for meta-human individuals turned into weapons at no volunteer and no fault of their own.

You rejoin the kitchen in a cloud of self-flagellation, because you're not yet graduated from your limp-footed origins as an undersized malcontent the 'Megs in the dancehalls used to humor; not yet removed of the truth that, well, you were always waiting for an Ace to ask you out on the floor instead, always waiting for the right partner. You met Peggy Carter when you were yet thin and ill, too goofy-looking to pass for her Ought but damn well ready to try.

Dave bites like an Ace, like he can't help it, then croons apologies like a Beta and begs favor like a Meg. If he's not the right partner - because your partner wasted away to the infirmity of old age, waiting on your first dance - then Dave would come the closest a Megan ever could, probably; and you such a stodgy monogamist thing with all that pre-occupation sat firm in your professional career, well. Not like this wasn't _your_ best option, too.

The arrangement could be worse; and Dave wasn't the first weaponized Oughtie put in front of you as Household assignment, and probably wouldn't even be the last, the further your team could tread into HYDRA's dismantling and the more victims you'd yet to encounter.

You tap your laptop awake, taking the seat at the kitchen's folding table to log into the chat client most likely to find Natalie online.  You let her know that you're thinking of her and she warns you that's inappropriate. 

(TONY would tease you every now and then, about the ease with which you'd taken to technological advances far ahead of your years, but a laptop was no less alien to you as driving a tank had been, or operating a canon, or disarming and dissembling a mine. A spatula was 'new technology' to someone who had never before had to cook; what difference was a touch-screen and a keyboard from a compass and a miter? They both took practice to master, and the 'ease' with which you'd adapted to the 21st century was only a testament to your work ethic.)

 _I mean the parallels between you and D,_ you insist, wincing because you were used to the heavy stabbing you'd have to do at a manual typewriter and that type of force was unkind on flimsy plastic keys.

 _I know what you meant,_ Natalie interrupts immediately. _And I stand by my first answer. Assumptions this early are unwise._

Right, because Natalie was never Feral, not even as a tactic (or especially not as a tactic - the name of the game in Project-X was social infiltration, Herculean control of the Self, stabilized and therefore lethal obfuscation). You curl your fingers away from the keyboard, then get over your pride.  _Any advice?_

It takes a beat too long, but then the single word arrives, and Natalie's username greys out, offline.  _None._

You're not sure what you were expecting.  Natalie was a lifetime experienced with her independence, chemically altered into her weaponhood, sane because her handlers had so carefully built up a Pack within the command hierarchy of her operation, which broke Nat's heart to betray. She wasn't queer, as far as you could tell, and was older than even yourself, with all those years between you spent in actual wakened living, a backstock of experiences she had, where you had only a frozen slumber, a pause, a blank delay one era to the next. Nat wouldn't have advice for handling Dave, because she and Dave shared little in common, beyond the obvious.

The buzzer at your apartment's intercom startles you out of your guilt, and your heart lifts a little at the prospect of Sam Wilson's timeless charisma arriving to rescue Dave from your grim resignation (which, okay yes, you realize is maybe half responsible for Dave's defensiveness, but ferality left its mark against your self-control, too, and emotional regulation was never your strength to begin with).

But it's Natalie's velvet demand to answer the intercom, and Wanda's distinct Sokovian burr in the background, and for too obvious a reason this puts your teeth on edge.  You buzz them up with long held practice pretending at Alpha indifference, lifting the deadbolt to leave the door open while you pace to the bedroom to see about a pair of pants.  You're mid-zipped into your slacks when you hear the knock, duck half into the hall to shout that it's open and almost dip to a knee for fear of waking Dave, overcautious, but stop yourself with a soft curse because it wasn't like Dave was scared  _of you,_ he was just scared, in general, of nothing in particular, anxious for invisible enemies, a common affliction of his lifestyle, Nat's lifestyle, your lifestyle.

You grunt an apology at Dave's waking mumble and shrug into a longsleeve as your apartment door opens.  He smells overwhelmingly like you, now, but also of something new, some third thing the both of you make together, heady and animal, that fills the room with comfort.

"Company," you warn, and rejoin the livingroom to bear host to the rustle of Introductions, and this puts your teeth on edge a little, too, though you feel a tug of remorse - it's a sad reality of your history, that you were once not only small for an Alpha but small for an adult, and to this smallness had surrendered your civility, fighting for any step of rank and every scrap of autonomy you could.  So yes, even good ol' Max getting too close to your Den too soon could ruffle your feathers, and Natalie's presence only worsens the effect, as protective as you were currently feeling over objectified soldier-Megs, the surplus of whom in your life has seen a return of your disgust with humanity and the abusive power structures therein. 

Happily enough, however, this rancor rarely tows the line any further than your shoulders or your scent. You're years grown past the glowers and the sharp words, years mellowed by an actualized Alphahood in a body that commands plenty of respect. You've been warned against your over-corrections, in fact, that you're a little _too_ mild mannered; actions, words and even thoughts neutralized by your long-standing struggle against your own temper.

"Feelin' some feelings,"  Dave remarks under breath from his flickered arrival to the kitchen, a vision of elegance in borrowed jogging sweats and sleep-rumpled zip hoodie, effortlessly beautiful in a way you wish you knew how to appreciate better.

"Reviewing a mission report," you lie easily, reaching past the tangle of Wanda's hug to slap your laptop shut as if to shield said fictional report from scrutiny.  You do feel lightened of your paranoia after chuffing your scent over Max's raspberry cordial, and pull a face at Natalie's pulled face of skepticism, accepting her Introduction in turn.

"Hey," Natalie coughs low Dave's way once she surfaces from the cloy of your over-sentimental pity-cling.  "Reps on the roof, Legs, let's go."  She taps the side of Dave's arm with the back of her knuckle, then tugs his rumpled sweater sleeve a bit straighter.

"Uh," you interrupt, eyebrows leveled. Sure, Dave was considerably subdued from the apex of his chemical distress, but he'd have a week yet to go before he'd level out to normal if this was an honest Heat, and if the Heat was a false flag then the last thing you'd ever do with a pregnant or feraled 'Meg would be to run them around to physical exhaustion.

Max only half shuts the apartment door, jerks her chin up at you.  "Wilson will bring the food," she announces carefully, her grasp of English tense not quite polished, and buzzes the lobby door for Sam.

"Agent Egbert has been in contact since landfall this morning," Natalie goes on to explain, tugging the fire escape window open. She shrugs out of her jacket, revealing an exercise tanktop, and snaps her fingers for Dave to follow, which he does, because he's a good Ought who does what he's told (generally).  "They caught up at rendezvous.  Jim wants to see you, first."

Ice crawls up your spine.  James Egbert - cordial, from what you remember of the handful of meet-n-greet mission support his department and SHIELD had weathered together for the UN Accords.  Half SkyNation; his birth mother a fallen Skaian living the quiet civilian life, the both of them gifted with superstrength, hence the FBI's entrusting him with the raising of a skytoddler of his own, who turned out to be John.  Jim was gray, dark grey hair, gray eyes, and he dressed in gray and spoke an even, gray English measure whose calm command struck much harder than any physical blow he could ever deliver. 

Dave was being removed from the Den because Jim was an Alpha, and an uncontested Head of the pseudo-family from which Dave's future custody had most probably been stolen, if the tone of last night's phonecall was any clue. You knew Jim, knew his handshake and his laugh and his professional acumen; you knew his liaison with the senior SHIELD Agents, Director Hill in particular by her early career with the American Federal Government. You did not know Jim knew the Striders, perhaps by dint of the secrecy under which the Striders operated, the coincidence of Dave's relationship to John. But then the Skaians would probably seek out community, however small their population, and you make a note to hunt out any further 'family' David might be missing, wouldn't have mentioned right away, good southern Ought making no fuss on his own account.

You firm your fists under the cross of your arms and nod at Dave's wide-eyed anticipation, granting leave.  Natalie tugs her hair up into a quick bun, then ducks through the window, tugs Dave after.  Footsteps approach up the hallway stairwell and you almost want to hide the duffel Dave leaves behind on the couch, bury the evidence that you had someone Heating and breakable in residence, and settle with closing the window, at least, the moment Sam pushes your apartment door open and all but whoops his arrival.

The clear bell of Sam Wilson's Beta yawp chips a sizable scale off your ill humor and you manage to relax your shoulders by the time you meet him at the door.  You accept an armful of groceries in thick paper bags between your greeting hug, elbow the door wide to let your houseguests in, forcibly casual about the lack of Intro because Sam is a Modernist vote in a Modern world to which you are trying to acclimate.  His wasn't a life of such 'touchy-feely' establishment, to the credit of his Beta resilience, and it had taken you as long to get used to _Sam's_ casual disregard for etiquette as it had taken Sam to warm to your Grandpa Ways.

Agent James Egbert keeps a patient sentry in the doorway, handing grocery bags in to Wanda, who speaks a low thanks as if they're at some hallowed ceremony, a Traditionalist to even the numbers in your favor.

Jim comes across as a Moderate vote if anything, having left his son out of sight but respecting the etiquette on your greeting, since it's your home.  He doesn't bare his neck or avert his eyes, though, and his handshake is a bit firmer than absolutely necessary, nostrils flaring discreetly for the familiar waft of the Oughtie you share in common, the black liquorice and Barbasol spice of him bitter and dry.  You've always been a little intimidated by some of SHIELD's Agents - Peggy Carter in the best way, you remember - and with James-of-the-FBI it's no different, so you step aside, mouth pulled back, hand up to present your Den to Jim's examination.

It's not Stark's staggering display of wealth disparity, but it's clean and dry and warm, furnished, functional.

"Dave's gone to the roof to take in some morning exercise," you excuse, shutting the door with a careful ease, pointedly ignoring the locks.

"Not exactly fresh air out there,"  Agent Egbert counters nearly immediately, though his voice is too dispassionate to betray anything other than some habitual running patronage for everybody else's state of health.  He lives in a suburban neighborhood, one strike against your keeping Dave here instead of Jim keeping Dave there, probably.

Sam scoffs.  "Index reads safe for grown lungs, and has done since the nineties.  It's kids you have to take to Central park, if you want to avoid the developmental disorders like asthma and allergies."

"And Dee isn't a kid," you remind mildly, crossing the room to pull more folding chairs from the hall. And Dee was raised in a city, besides, and smoked like a chimney.

Jim chuckles, monotonous and pleasant.  Gray.  "Need I state the obvious, Captain Rogers, on the subject of children?"  He leans close to take a chair, helps settle the table away from the wall, rights the renewed vase of dandelions from its topple.  He fingers a slim yellow petal free from a bloom, watches it shrivel up dry in double-time, a found clue to the linger of Dave's talents. Investigative branch, Dave had remarked. John sorted mail and brought coffee, and Jim hunted mutants out for Registry.

You pause, carefully set the chair in your hands free from any sudden misjudgments of strength.

Agent Egbert takes the offered seat, softening the blow of his abrupt candor, and crosses an ankle over his knee to set a more casual atmosphere. 

Sam claims the chair between you both, the camphor vanilla soothe of him the loudest chemical call in the air right now as you all sit to level the field of discussion.  "Buddy's got an eye on my neighborhood in DC; ain't that right Cap?  Good schools, gated streets; and we'd be in throwing distance of you'n John."  Which is a lie, but a welcome one; and not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Jim nods his approval, fidgets a pipe out of his buttoned suit jacket to clamp between his teeth, unlit but sweet in its waft.

You stare a little longer than is polite, because Jim's canine teeth crowd forward, a pattern you'd noticed in the Bonding Bite scar Dave's Tim had left behind - but then who knew fact from fiction on that, since Dave simultaneously 'never fucked but for the Ace that bit him' AND 'had a recent support liason' who left their marking stink and probably an offspring behind in him.  Tim Pierson's death was as good an excuse as any behind which Dave could hide an affair, with a high profile Ace maybe, an enemy of the State or a married figurehead or fellow Skaian, someone in hiding, an unregistered meta-human perhaps. You'd also made note on the width of the scar, assumed that Dave's shoulders could have stretched enough to widen the mark from the year of its making, but...  Jim's jaw is SkyNation wide, narrowed and wolfish at chin and nose, and he smells a little of citrus under his licorice and ink, sweet tobacco.

Your stare hardens.  You accept the open beer from Wanda, blinking mute surprise up at her. 

"It's a celebration," Wanda announces brightly, handing a beer to Jim as well, keeping one for herself as she sits opposite Sam.  "There has been a marriage," she helpfully reminds, clinks a toast with Sam's coffee mug of water.

You remember that of all gathered in this drafty little apartment, Wanda is the most dangerous, and she's on your side.

"Oranges?" you prompt, out of left field.

"With breakfast today, one, yes," Egbert answers mildly, tugging his sleeve straight before sampling his beer.  "Though it's our dear Broderick you'll have tasted, if that's who you're asking after."

Tasted.  Not smelled.

You take a cautious perch forward, cradling your beer between your palms, fingers interlaced, forearms resting on the table edge.  That wouldn't be so unusual, the soak of a guardian through the scent of their ward.  But you had, indeed, tasted oranges in Dave, deep in the hidden ply of his call for a familiar mate.  It might have been someone else, that not-Tim-Pierson affair, but now Jim is here smelling like citrus and tobacco, and while scents could easily match between any dozen Aces in a day's passing, the coincidence here and now strikes a little hard. 

Jim had driven all this way, at such an early hour, to meet a request that could have honestly waited until the weekend, a more convenient hour, a less delicate pique of Dave's health.  You close your eyes, inhale sharp to ask the next question, but it's Max who gives a soft 'hoh' of surprise, scuffing her chair in closer to lean her elbows on the tabletop.

"The handsome Houston?" Max says, is awarded a curt nod. "I wondered about that."

Jim switches his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other, and you realize he is bereft his fedora, hair disheveled for lack of pomade, for ill rest against airplane seating.  He'd answered the emergency of your phonecall so abruptly as to forego his usual immaculate composure, disrupted of his Federal Agent regulation.  "The Alpha from whose custody David was never taken; the ruse to buy him time in the Widow Auction."  Jim's implication is so heavy in the air that you're a little short on breath.  He isn't lying, isn't spinning some tale to suit an easy narrative; he's giving you pertinent information, because Jim knew the Striders in ways few others could, professionally or (or).

"That's a," you cough, clear your throat.  "Creative, ah, way to fool the State."  You take a swig of beer, nose burning from the carbonation.  Who better to keep an overpowered Skaian under hand than someone of the same make?  "That's your bite on Dee's shoulder, then?"

Sam hisses under his breath, reaching behind you to work a bracing massage at the back of your neck, just shy of a scruffing.

Jim blinks slowly.  "A bite," he asks lightly.

"The... bite," you try again, carefully, eyebrows colliding.  "On Dave.  The Bonding mark, from Tim Pierson - or I suppose if that's a fiction then from Dave's provisional partner, or someone else?"

Jim tilts his chin, staring down the far corner of the livingroom.  "No, Captain Rogers, I don't think there is a bite scar.  Dave has had a long and storied career in violence, and that has left its marks enough. Perhaps you are mistaken."

Your nose curls, and you square your elbows atop the table to wring the bottle of beer between your hands.  "So it is yours."

Jim considers, scent flagging neither guilt nor alarm, but the dusty char of resignation.  "I'm certain if there is a scar, it is some mummery by the lads to keep Dave unwanted.  There was never a partner to bond him by."  Jim taps his beer bottle atop the table like a gavel, meeting your stare with mirrored tension.  "I asked David if his brother yet lived, this morning; for at no other excuse would Broderick Strider have ever forfeit custody.  I ask that you impart some trust in me, on this matter, and trouble no one -" he grips your forearm, hand cool and warm in places from cold beer bottle and the heat of Alpha health.  "Absolutely no one else, on the lies given over to the State, that had been construed to so safeguard the Striders together in the past."  Jim squeezes lightly.  Your grip tightens, flexing the muscle under his hand.

If it came to light that the Striders had fooled the State, there might be repercussions, examples might need to be made of the slight, it could mean trouble for everyone.

Jim continues, "And we'll greet the present with every hurrah for the future, eh old boy?"  He pats your arm, toasts the air with his beer.

"Amen," Sam agrees, reaching over you to knock your beer into Jim's, because you've shut down against the urge to demand answers, mindful of the delicacy involved in exposing what would amount to treason, however crafty and to whatever good intent.

"Sure," you allow dryly, sharing suspicion with Max, who sits forward to assure you.  You ease back in your seat, arm extended to balance your beer on the edge of the table.  "I know Dee would like to see you, at any rate.  And John, especially."

"Ah, John is waiting on the roof - a bit of a tradition between them, you see -"  Jim casts back at the apartment, eyes narrowed at the window through which Dave and Natalie had left.  He stands, pipe in the corner of his mouth and beer left at the table unsampled.  "If I might step out for a smoke?  I'm afraid the journey here has quite frazzled my nerves."  He chuckles.  "I expected a kidnapping.  You look like the one stolen away, old boy."  He laughs again, a quieter harrumph, bending to inspect the window, "I did not apprehend a fight, but now that I'm here, I'm glad we needn't."

"Would he be better with you?" you demand quietly as you stand to join Agent Egbert, instead of answering the small talk.  "Jim, I'm asking as a friend.  Could you do better by Dave, than me?  Than the Avengers?"

Jim blinks wide, pulls his pipe from his teeth with an audible click.  "Certainly not!" he sputters, then his grin cracks open, a full-bellied laugh, eyes creased shut in warm mirth.  "You've the wrong end of it, dear sir! Oho!"  His chumly punch on the shoulder nearly rocks you to a stumble, and you are glad it didn't have to come to a fight, too.  "Miz Maximoff has the right of it, lad, this is _a celebration."_   Still chuckling, Jim hobbles the window as if the surprise has wounded him.  "We'll get you known to John, eh?  By your leave?"

"Sure,"  Sam answers for you, grip tight over your shoulder.  "I don't think it's latched."

Jim pulls the window up, unbuttons his suit coat and vest for ease of bending a middle-aged frame onto a narrow brownstone fire escape, and disappears lithely from view.  

You know better than to follow, but that's your Megan up there now, too, and you can't unsee the width of Jim's grin, the crowding of his teeth, the unique semi-circle scar in Dave's skin, deep enough it had dented his muscle, a visible loss of control, or, to Jim's suggestion, a purposeful chomp applied to its lasting image, a ruse.  

"You're doing good," Sam says, patting the nape of your neck.  "Keep it together.  Take a seat."

You twitch, tempted to disobey.  "Max, can you check on Nat?" you ask, returning to the table, the breeze in from the window chasing your bare heels.  "Breakfast in the fridge, Sam."

Sam takes the hint, relents you to your chair while Wanda leaves hers, strident with curiosity.  She closes the window after herself, to spare you the strain of trying to eavesdrop past wind and city noise.

Sam slaps a plate of cold bacon on the table and takes the seat opposite, considering the situation.  "Natalie's smitten.  Never heard the woman give me two words sideways but the grocery run was a whole-ass dissertation on Dee's new training schedule."  His shoulders jerk in a silent chuckle, grin kind.  "Like girl got a new pony, ready to put it through some paces, the way she talk."

You close your eyes, arms tucked together in front of your chest.  "Must have been lonely, the only Oughtie in our Den.  And Dave's - well, you know.  One of us."  You wipe your face, peek through your fingers.  "Might be pregnant."

Sam coughs on a morsel of bacon.  "Already?" He crimps his brow, scornful over the braggery and doubtful of the claim.  "Damn."

You sigh, upend your hand out.  "From before.  From someone... before."

"Alright," Sam shrugs, considers, relaxing back with someone's beer.  "Cool.  So the team gets a two-for-one deal in the Strider aisle."

You smile, grateful for the kindness of Sam's perspective.  "Yeah, except it might be -" you jerk your eyes roof-ward.  "And that might be why he showed up here so fast."

Sam inhales sharp, wincing.  "Yeah?  That's why you're all -" his hands spackle the air, indicating your prickliness. "You think OG has a claim?"

You wipe your eyes again, tired, both physically fucked out and emotionally exhausted.  "It's fine if he does.  Anthony might not like it, but that kid up there needs his _family_ back."

Sams frowns, impressed.  "Easy come, easy go, I guess."

You dimple a cheek at him, resigned to have to fight Anthony on Dave's behalf, on Jim's.  You only know Jim well enough to trust that he's not some HYDRA operative, at least - the Skaians valued their autonomy enough to disparage faction recruitment; had evaded SHIELD enlistment for as long.  "What do you know about custody contracts?  I might have to make a claim just to get Dave back where he belongs."

Sam levels a cool consideration at the question.  "Can't help you there, but we got people at the VA who specialize in family court. It's normal though, right?"  He sits forward, sets the beer down.  "Joining a Pack different from the one that raised you.  If this Dave kid weren't with us, where would he be, do you think?"

You shrug, "Faking Widowhood under his brother's custody, still?"

Sam stands, returns to the sorting of groceries from their bags, drystock mostly because you never did get that list to him and he knows you don't show up here often enough to use what might spoil in a fridge. "Don't you think if OG had a claim, he'd have made it by now? Guy practically lit you a cigar, Cap, he's happy for you. Happy for Dave."

You nod, soothed of your paranoia, at least in part. Dave was good at subterfuge; Nat had admitted as much at last night's dinner, and you were inclined to agree. If he turned out pregnant and not just come down with the flu, well, he could tell you at his own leisure. And it wouldn't be the first of its story, if Jim had taken up with Dave in any biblical sense, despite the difference in age - Dave wasn't his ward, after all, and Jim's relief of Dave's new custody would be in keeping with such an affair. It wasn't illegal to knock a Megan up extra-maritally, it was just embarrassing.

Sam leaves his chair and you push away from the table as if to follow, but he pats your shoulder in passing, a physical suggestion that you stay, chill out on your own for a beat. He starts straightening the kitchen of its empty grocery bags, and you slide your laptop over to open, to review some mission reports in actuality, give yourself a distraction.

You feel a draft along the floor, but when you check to see who might be climbing back in through the window, you find it shut, still, and glance to the door with a frown, finding it also shut. The draft builds, reminding you of rooms in buildings gutted by catastrophic upheaval, an open-air feeling like a wall's gone missing.

Sam turns from the fridge with a frown of his own, feeling the same, and lifts his chin at you, quizzical. Magazine covers wave open, a dandelion in the vase lists in a lazy spin, a thin golden petal tumbling against a beer bottle, sticking to its condensation.

You're not yet used to seeing Dave materialize from one place to the next, so it startles you just as badly when John Egbert fades in at the chair across the table from yours, and the breeze in the room stops. He's wearing glasses, which you didn't expect, and he's tall for a Meg - though not as tall as Dave - and smells like suppressants, like Beta, like a food you've never had, an item you've never worn, and a place you've never been. John wears a loudly blue pullover hoodie under a black blazer, and his eyes are bright but serious, hair cut much shorter than the picture Dave had in his phone. He's thinner, too, than the photo - or maybe that's just a lack of smile, a lack of rounding-out.

You slide your laptop and abandoned beers aside, offering your hand to shake.

John tugs his chair forward, bright yellow canvas sneakers bracing flat on the floor, and puts his elbow on the table with his cupped fist raised, a challenge to a contest of strength.

You blink, mouth pulling to the side in amused doubt, and match for the pose, wrapping John's slender hand in your own.

"Hi again," Sam prompts, eyes so wide it looks like it might actually hurt.

"Hi Sam," John answers evenly, and he sounds just as he had over the phone - young but determined. 

You have to grip the opposing edge of the table to keep it from scuttling off-kilter, because John's challenge against your pulling strength is _formidable;_ and your gripping hands waver. "Don't let me win just to save my pride," you warn when John's strength wobbles.

"I don't want to break your table," which had begun to creak and bow, cheap foldable thing. 

"Don't let me win just to save my furniture."

John smiles through his concentration, and a breeze stirs the flowers in their vase, and your arm slowly begins to tip back over. When John's victory lands the back of your hand against the tabletop it knocks a beer over, which you scoop up to spare the floor the spill, wagging your abused hand to return circulation.

"So what was that, an interview?" you say, sucking beer from the heel of your thumb.

"A friend bet me I couldn't," John answers sheepishly, hiding his hands in his blazer pockets. "Way back before you even showed up, again. Never thought I'd get the chance to find out." 

"John's a fan," Sam supplies, tossing you a tea towel to soak up spilled beer.

"John's an Asgardian," you joke, like you might as well have called him French, if the French were ever famed on Herculean strength packed into unassuming frames.

John just watches you, mouth pursed in a thoughtful frown. "Sorry I yelled at you."

You shrug. "I think I'll live. Sorry I married Dave without a heads-up."

John shrugs, knee bouncing, and he does smell a little like a rooftop reunion with the 'Megs above, a muted mix of persons in the air. "I think he'll live."

"You gonna join the team, Egbert?" Sam asks, leaning over to pluck some bacon from the half-gone plate. Chewing, "I'm still in DC; we could collab."

John huffs a quiet sigh through his nose, fidgets a beer over in front of himself just to pluck at the label. Unlike Dave, John doesn't have any (visible) scars, and he's considerably more relaxed, despite the contrast in poise. Dave kept still, moved quiet, radiated anxiety; John fidgeted and moved with obvious noise, open and nearly old-fashioned in his Megan confidence, completely at ease. "I don't think 'the team' really needs my enrollment, folks. I'm just here to check up on a friend."

"And win a bet," you say, arms crossed but eyebrows up. Odd, that he'd categorize Dave as a friend, but then not every queer was as brash as to go around announcing themselves, and you also had a 'friend', once, whom you wouldn't call anything else despite the depth of your intimacy.

John smiles, a soft Megan expression that shows off his buck teeth. "That, too, Captain Rogers."

"You can call me Steve," you assure, a little uncertain if Dave up on the roof was handling this morning as casually, but determined to give Jim the privacy. 

"Wull you can call me John, then." And John says that like a challenge, watching you with those serious eyes again, unblinking behind the thick black frames of his glasses. It feels expectant, somehow, and you are at a loss to answer him, but then -

"Oh, uh -" You push back to a stand, and John does the same, the Introduction long overdue. To your surprise, John meets you halfway around the table, neck already bared, eyes bright; and when you fold the scenting embrace around him he _giggles,_ more of his Meganhood proving through.

"You smell like Dave," John says in the muffle of your shoulder, pinked at the edges of his ears and neck. He rights his glasses to peer at you with a crooked grin, no further comment.

"Mm," you agree evenly, breaking the Intro with an awkward pat. John smells null, but under the suppressants he's pancakes and rain and letterprint ink; hardly anything of Jim lingering in him, and you wonder if that's on purpose for this visit, or if John really is living his life so independently. "Actually," you start, reaching behind yourself to take a careful sit again. "If you aren't joining the Team - and you're right, the Avengers weren't exactly open for enrollment even when Dave showed up -"

John sinks down to take the floor a pace away, legs crossed lotus to watch you with that unblinking intensity, a show of respect that was old-fashioned even for your generation, that makes Sam sputter into his fresh mug of orange juice when he catches sight.

"Um," you stall out, blinking, and shake your head to clear your surprise. "That, I mean, we don't _need_ another Skaian on the roster. Would be more trouble, more legal scrutiny actually, for uh, for us."

John hums agreement, knee pulled up to rest his cheek, eyes narrowing Sam's way and back to you again, as Sam sits similarly beside John just to even the awkwardness.

"For the Avengers." You finish, studying the floor, giving time for the gravity of that fact to sink in. "But," you say, eyebrows up.

"But?" Sam leads, interrupting your stall.

You let a smile lighten under your eyes, warming at Sam's scrutiny, always a little Schadenfreude when it came to teasing your Beta. "But joining the Team isn't the same thing as joining the House. Barton's on the Team but he lives half the year with his own family - and Pepper's in the Family but she isn't who we would consider an Avenger. So," To John, who is listening intently, "Even if you're none too keen on switching careers just now, do you have a House? Would you like to join ours?"

"'Ours', who?" John asks simply, and that's a fair question.

You look at Sam, shrug. The Avengers were your Pack, sure, but the House was always in contention, unsettled of any rank, chaos on even a good day. "Mine and Dave's," you conclude, because this was as good an excuse as any to calcify the rivalry between you and Anthony, break off something like a distinction - and that not so unusual, Packs or Houses both grown too large over time would split to smaller, more exclusive Dens.

"Oh," John says neutrally.

 _"Oh,"_ Sam repeats, "So it's like that, is it?"

"And Sam's," you amend, nodding just to hide your smile. Too easy. "If you'll have us; I've been meaning to make that move to DC to work a little more closely with our Federal agenda."

"Wh - yeah!" John interrupts, sitting forward, shaking at the joints with a buzz of excitement that you can nearly feel in the air. "Jeeze! I mean, so long as you're going to be in the neighborhood!"

You hold Sam's questions in check, laying the groundwork. "We might have more people in-House by the time I make it down there, just so you're aware."

John laughs, a bright sound that reminds you abstractly of wind through chimes. "Well I'd assume so! That's so g r e a t," he practically growls, overcome with approval, slapping the floor like banging a gavel to call order to his own excitement. "Ugh. Yes." John sobers somewhat, pushes himself to a kneel, then a stand, Sam following. "In the meantime, _Captain,"_ John peers over the tops of his glasses, and you can't help but feel a little bit teased. "I'd like to ask visiting permission? As Dave's Beta?"

And very quickly you are lost. "As Dave's..?"

"Beta," Sam supplies, crossing his arms with a nod like he knows exactly what is going on, the jerk.

You narrow your eyes, and almost want to decline, but, "You can be Dave's grandmother for all I care; but only if you're okay staying at the Complex with us." Since the apartment was never meant for more than one person - you could comfortably fit a family of four in a place like this in 1938, but the trappings of modern living had seen households expand if just to make room for all the kitchen appliances. "Which means you'll meet the Team," you lower your chin to look over the rims of a set of glasses you don't own and aren't wearing, matching John in condescension. "The Team that you aren't joining."

Sam snaps his fingers, slumping down in a chair to try and puzzle out the logistics of the year to come, catching on to your ploy. "So, wait, waitwait, wait - Dave is _in the Avengers,_ isn't he?"

"Correct," you say, and scoop three beer bottles together as you stand, stroll away from the table to empty the bottles in the kitchen sink. "As soon as he's cleared for mission enlistment. Under Anthony's contract."

"No, yeah," Sam says, palms up. "Just making sure. I only got the impression that Tony wanted to hold onto this one, as like a Media Presence." He stands from the table to join you in the kitchen, John following.

"Dave can still be a media presence in DC, Sam, and Director Stark isn't chained to the New York office," you say, "and we aren't even _in_ New York much of the year as it is; travel from home has never put a dent in mission standard before, don't know why it'd matter if 'home' was just somewhere else." 

John makes a noise of agreement in the back of his throat, fidgeting with the glass of juice Sam hands over from the counter. "I'm not home a lot, too - for some reason they're always calling me to China; did you know we have collaborations with Chinese Paranormal Militia? I didn't know that, but we do. And they're _awesome."_

You wait at the sink rinsing beer bottles, a practiced conversational tactician.

John hums, considers the ceiling, and then - "If you really think about it, we could end up living just about anywhere!"

"Say now," you cast a sly glance of victory over at Sam, who scowls playfully. "There's an idea. Do you suppose Dave would be more comfortable if I got a place in Texas?" You hadn't wanted to simply invite John at the start - that would be forward, and this way you could save his Beta(?) pride should he find any excuse to object. You'd be lying if you said that John's Orientation Transition was par - it was highly unusual and damn near illegal, especially for an Ought; maybe even medically hazardous, but you couldn't assume on today's medical advances, nor the biological norms of Skaians.

Sam at least holds more contemporary familiarity with John's generation, if not the social climate surrounding Oughts in this era, and is appropriately deferential. "I like my house," Sam gripes half-heartedly. "I like my neighborhood, and my dayjob, and I can fly to New York in twenty just as easy, too. Or, forty to get to Texas, I guess."

"Nobody said nuthin' to the Modernist about it," you tease, swatting the side of Sam's knee with a dish towel.

"Okay sorry, Grandpa," Sam counters.

You scoff, "Aggravator."

Sam mocks your scoff, "Relic."

"FBI," John says, nodding; and he's funny, and you like that he's funny even if you don't laugh, even if you haven't laughed in full since before the war and probably wouldn't laugh in full hence - unless it were to some breaking point of exasperation, some deranged exhausted chuckle you've been known to let slip at the height of mortal struggle.

"Want to check on the rooftop brigade?" you say, instead of laughing. "I'd invite everyone back in, but it'd get a little crowded."

Sam claps his hands together, rubs them briskly. "All right. Wedding reception etiquette, then. Steve my guy, that's you out in the hall."

You inhale deep, exhale in a huff.

Sam eyes you sidelong. "Don't act like you don't need the time-out." Because you're damaged, your self-control stunted, your Alphahood antagonistic, and even if you ever were one for crowds you'd never be one for crowds of unranked Aces mixed in with Oughts under your protection.

"Where do I stand?" John asks, arms crossed and chest out, young but determined.

Sam, "You can hang in the hall with Rogers. Keep him from chewing the banister."

You open the apartment door for John, eyes narrowed at Sam but refraining from play-back, a little distracted with the idea of Jim in your Den alone (not alone, obviously, but -). You close the door firmly after you and John and rest your forehead against the painted wood for a heartbeat, until you hear Sam open the livingroom window, the distant jar and rattle of the fire escape.

When you settle to the top of the hall stairs, John scoots himself over until you're sat snugly hip-to-hip, very much Omegan despite any front toward Betahood. You lend an arm to brace behind John, a casual duty for the only spare Alpha in reach, and wonder that John does not prickle the way Dave might, that John for all his half attempts at Beta individualism fails to carve an austerity out for himself, where Dave more effortlessly succeeds. "It's fine if you're here as a Megan, too, you know," you say, quiet for the sake of your neighbors. "We won't let the State bully us for being a multi-Meg household."

John hums, thoughtful. "Mh. Nooo, haha." He sniffles, presses harder into your side, sighs. "I understand that it wasn't Dibs who called, last night. Do you think, maybe, he would have? Do you think there was a reason that he didn't?"

"It's fine if you're in a relationship," you offer delicately, forcibly casual. "That's not something Dave needs to hide with the Team, and it's obvious your intervention meant a lot to him." Worked just as well as a Beta would have, all things considered.

"Right," John exhales, tapping his foot. "I mean I'm asking you, why Dave didn't call me. Why I haven't heard from him in _four months,_ before you called last night."

"Did you have a falling-out?" You guess, lamely.

"None that I can remember; and! I mean! It does, it happens a lot, the Striders going underground for months at a time," John insists. "I don't think Dave up and getting his butt married should hurt our friendship any, either way, it's just - he didn't call, you know? If you're inviting me to your Household for Dave's sake, well, I have to wonder if I could even make much of a difference at all, in the long run. I'm not actually a Beta, he can't get from me what he'd need from someone like Sam."

"That's a very practical consideration." You slouch back a little, watching your door as the sound of climbers down fire escape ladders grows. "I'm just trying to construct a landing platform of familiarity, here. Dave only showed up yesterday, and he's... well, you know. He was in a lot of pain," you explain calmly, forcing your breath even. "John, I wouldn't have taken your boyfriend for my own sake. Dave needed the grounding."

John pales. "Is Bro actually dead?" he breathes, watching the middle distance. Of all the things John ever thought Dave capable, losing his cool was not one.

"We don't think so. And by Dave's report, he's lived in Ferality almost his whole life, fighting underground the way that they were -" 

"Whoa!" John interrupts, forces his voice to a low strain, "Dave's not feral! And I'm not his boyfriend," he argues, late, hands scrambling in the air as if to clear it of cobwebs. "If I was, don't you think he would have called me earlier than this? Sheesh!"

"Uh," you huff, nonplussed. "Whatever the vagaries of your relationship, what I'm trying to say -"

John makes _a noise,_ a drawn-out growling exasperation that puts a tension low in your chest. "This sucks! Holy cow, Steve, are you not aware of how much this - how bad -"

"It's fine," you say, lowering your voice to inspire John to lower his. "It's not like D's without options, here, with us. Just, try to think of me as," you lower your eyes in thought, hands up, "A support professional, right? No worse than someone the State would have assigned, and I don't have to answer to the State at all."

John _scorns,_ a dry wind guttering up from the stairwell. "Bleh, that's such a shitty thing to say right now. Like you didn't -" his eyes gloss a little behind the dark frames of his glasses, the tip of his nose reddening. "You didn't sort through an Auction and point Dave out and choose him. You didn't spend these past four months monopolizing his time, dealing with Brodie's weird shit just to get a visit in, you didn't -"

"I did not," you admit, gently stern. "But now that he's here, I'm not letting Dave go." You tactfully leave out the berth of hidden elements that could wield Dave to crueler ends, your surety as a brand new Authority in the safekeeping of the Earth, how Dave and even Houston fit into SHIELD's plans, now. "So if you want him back in your life, John, you don't have to _be_ a Beta. He's not under keeps, not like that. We're just trying to help."

John rubs his sleeve under his nose, watches out the foggy lined glass of the corridor window. "That's supposed to be reassuring, huh?"

You blink. "It's the only truth I've got to give, right now."

John shrugs the shoulder nearest to you, avoiding eye contact. "I guess. And that's not your fault, if I'm -" his eyes darken as he tucks his elbows back in, watching clouds shadow the building facades outside, sun bursting through as they pass. "If I'm kinda not part of the picture anymore." He shakes his head through his faint smile, gaze distant. "People just grow apart."

You close your eyes, nod to agree.

John scoffs, reaches forward to untangle a shoelace. He shrugs, hapless. "I'm not saying I've given up being Dave's friend, you know? I just couldn't help him live the life he wanted to live, and he couldn't help me either." John serves the air, chest hitching, "And now Dave's taken a freaking Auction Bid out of nowhere, and you're telling me that he's sick, from all that fighting, I guess?"

Your mouth twists to the side. "That's what we assume, but -"

John scowls. "And! So! He's been contracted in to do more fighting, even if he's in such a bad way? What kind of sense does that make?" His teeth show through his frown. "So do I want to join a team, to help enable all of that? Why would I?"

You snort, well aware of SHIELD's hypocrisy, your own undocumented ferality nonwithstanding. "The fighting didn't make Dave sick, John; isolation from a supportive Pack did. Well," you amend, wishing Sam were here to do the correcting, because he was better at it. "The fighting probably acted as a catalyst, but even if Dave had lived as peaceful a life as -" As you had, raised alone in a neighborhood about as non-violent as First-World poverty might allow. You grunt, losing the plot. "Have you met Natalie? Hers was -" Well, probably not your story to tell, actually, and you fall quiet again.

John chuffs through an expression that could only be categorized as a pout, though he might have been trying for consternation. "If Dave hadn't been fighting, you think he'd still be sick?" He pulls away from your side to watch your expression, weighing the air for an answer.

Voices rise from your apartment - laughter, Sam's soothing Beta burr that precedes the opening of the door.

"I think, uh," you stall, distracted but, "Yes. That's what I think."

Jim steps through with hands slung casually in his trouser pockets, shirtsleeves rolled up because of course he'd need his wrists free, making as many acquaintances as he just was. He hikes an eyebrow at the distance between you and John on the step, and you fib - "It seems that Dave might be too good for us."

"Oho," Jim drawls, switching his unlit pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. "I might lend you John's help, Captain Rogers; his is an excellent and practiced homekeeping." Which served as a reminder on several fronts - that you were Captain Rogers, for a start, and that John's station in life was a domestic one kept or given at the behest of the Alphas in charge of him.

It gives you a chill to hear such a bald reprimand hidden behind a front of charity, but John only smiles, abashed, and sits back to try and peer around his dad's legs into your apartment. "Dave's still on the roof?"

Jim hums affirmative, checking his chained watch from the tuck of his vest pocket. "Miss Romanov was adamant about the afternoon's exercise, and I was in trouble for the interruption."

You stand from the stairs, which grants permission for John to stand from the stairs, and lift your chin at James Egbert. "Thanks for making the trip out. Sorry for all the alarm this must have caused."

"What?" John pipes from behind you, caught off guard by the implied farewell.

"Any time - and I mean that." Jim meets your handshake a degree more warmly than before. "Well, John!" he barks, which startles you to dropping the handshake. "You and Dave have grown into quite the young gentlemen, when I wasn't watching!"

John, owl-eyed, reddens. "Dad," he croaks. "Not here."

Jim stamps his heel, fists braced on hips. "But it is here before my very eyes that my children have become men!"

"I'm getting your coat," John insists, and you can practically feel the heat of his blush as he passes you both to the door of the apartment. "And I'll say goodbye to Dibs, and then we'll leave."

Jim turns to you as John departs, and drops his voice. "They've both grown up without a mother this whole while, you know, and I'm afraid I've spoiled one or the other in trying to make up for the lack." 

"Oh, uh," you don't really know what your position in this is supposed to be, expression lopsided. "No, he's all right. Dave's all right and John's, John's fine. I'm always glad to see confidence in our Agents," Your mouth tugs to the side, biting down on the awkward sentiment. "And more especially in the socially oppressed."

Jim chuckles at your struggle, jounces down a few stairs to look back up at you. "The coat is a loan, for Dave's comfort." He takes his pipe from the corner of his mouth, taps some of the old ash free against the stairwell banister, wrings his smallest finger into the bowl. "I'm immensely proud that lad, you should know."

A chill of awe rises up your spine watching Jim's eyes glass up, and remorse sours low in your gut for having assumed Jim was anything other than a father figure to Dave. "Anthony, too, I think," you say. "If you'd like to pay him a visit, I'm sure the reception office for the Complex is open by now. They're uh, peas from the same pod, those two."

Jim grunts softly from the back of his throat, reaches down to hike first one pant leg and then the other up, taking a careful sit on the tiled stairs. "And is Tony Stark aware of just how much Dave must overcome, just by waking to face the day, that he remain of use to your organization?"

You take a breath, join the sit with an easier bend of the knees, elbows at rest. "I was just discussing that with John, actually. Dave's ferality?"

"How easily you summon that word," Jim says, soft, packing his pipe with fresh tobacco shred from a leather pouch summoned from a bottomless wallet, one of those Skaian pocket dimensions. "But yes. It was my understanding that the State meant to retire Dave to his own keeping, and Houston to a contract with Professor Harley, under the H.I. Department of Research."

"Well," you consider the order of events, what you knew on-file of contracts and signing dates. "They did as much, I think. Just happens that Dave's keeping still fell under Houston, and Houston passed him on to Anthony, at the discretion of a long friendship between them. I'm not really sure where SHIELD comes into that."

Jim muses again, pulling at his pipe though it remained unlit, tasting the sweet tobacco. "I wonder about that, too. I'd caution you against involvement, except it seems that Broderick has jailed himself away quite tidily with SHIELD on his own volunteer." He shrugs, pops his hat out of the same sylladex wallet the tobacco had come from, presses the heel of his palm in to fidget at the hat's felted shaping. "I suppose I ought to be proud of that lad, too, for finally growing up."

You chuff agreement, a little surprised. "You've known Houston long? Not just Dave?"

"You couldn't know one without the other - but yes, I made Broderick's acquaintance first, when he was yet without Orientation. That would be," Jim looks up, chews his pipe, fidgets his hat. "Hoo, I suppose that would be when Doctor Lalonde made her visit Stateside to beat him up." He tilts toward you, conspiratorial, "Another Skaian, you see, quite determined that Broderick not misrepresent us." He chuckles, gaze distant with memory, eyes as equally serious and merry as John's. "Wonderful woman. If you're lucky, she'll be 'round Christmastime. I'll be sure to have John pass along the invitation." He pulls himself forward, standing with a groan.

"I look forward to it," you say, offering another handshake as you stand, join Jim on the second stairwell landing. "Dave's family is always welcome under our roof, I hope that goes without saying."

Jim's eyes widen, posture frozen and grip urgent around your hand. "Do not mistake me," he warns quietly, and you dip your chin to better listen, ears ringing. "Broderick is the only family of Dave's with legal claim to such - and there's good reason he did not market his contract under Anthony as well, despite their friendship."

You nod. "So everybody's welcome except the _other_ feral Strider. Got it."

Jim watches you carefully, nearly suspicious. "Would that I could speak in such levity, son, but Broderick Strider is not Feral. Just as there was no Alpha to bond Dave by, there was no murder of that Alpha, merely an accident of infrastructure, and a dead body to support the plot." He sighs, nods up at John's appearance in the hall. Aside, to you, "Broderick is not Feral, merely Skaian. More Skaian than any who have fallen so far, and in his alien mien we can find no humanity at all by which one could claim feral excuse."

You're a bit stunned by this, slow to drop the handshake as John joins you on the landing, wafting strongly of Dave-flavored distress.

"More Skaian than us? We're talking about Bro, huh?" John's eyes are wet, dark lashes clumped together, the side of his mouth pinked from kiss or strike, and you ache a little to remember being so young, with so few problems in the world that a petty bout with a friend was your worst worry. "Yeah, that guy's insane. And gross." John shoves his hands in his trouser pockets, bounces on heels, asks Jim with sad eyes, "Can we go home?" All that stoic individualism is gone; John is young but no longer determined, rounded out at the edges by the swell of his emotions.

Jim is as nonplussed at John's emotional state as you are, and narrows his eyes back up the stairs, exhaling. "I plan to spare an hour's visit to Director Stark at the Offices upstate, first," he leads.

"John's welcome to stay for lunch, if he'd rather not suffer airport food," you say, picking up what allowance Jim is laying at your feet. It went without saying that John needed no escort to return home on his own whim, smelling of nothing worse than a recent visit with a Meg, and no vulnerability of his own.

"John will take you up on that offer," John says, half sardonic. His determination peeks through at the set of his shoulders, a scowl faintly crimping between his brows.

Jim nods, returned to his quiet cheer, and tucks his hat on. "Gentlemen," he bids, one hand tucked into a trouser pocket and the other pulling his pipe from his teeth to salute with.

You lift your chin, half on one step up, to watch Jim depart. "So what's going on," you say over John's head, taking a sit to the top landing. 

John remains on the second landing, bumps his fist idly against the side of his leg. "I have a job to answer to," he says. "I can't just up and leave all my friends at the Office, and there's the matter of the contract I'll have with the Extra-Terrestrial Division of Foreign Affairs, after graduation." He sighs, shrugs, hands in hoodie pockets. "You joke that I'm Asgardian, but America really is going to need representatives who can match Asgardian advantages in some way, if we want to be taken seriously on an Interstellar platform."

"America, or the Earth at least," you say in all fairness, planting the heel of your palm atop the stair beside you in invitation, arm open.

John sits beside you, sighs. He fidgets a little closer, knees turned to brace against the side of your leg. "I want to be here, in Dave's House."

"But," you prompt.

"But I just can't do that _right now,_ when Dave actually needs me."

You bite the inside of your cheek, considering. "When he 'actually' does? Is this something to do with the four-month radio silence?"

"He's uh," John's mouth firms, shoulder bumping into your arm as he shifts. "Independent."

"Really," you ask, suspicious. "Give or take a biological sabotage?"

John flushes. "He's _fine,"_ he mumbles, glancing sidelong. "He's certainly not sick the way that you think."

Honest curiosity cools your frustration, "What makes you say that?"

"Wull," John huffs, digs in closer to you. "I was raised the exact same way, sans violence, and I'm not Feral." He counts out on his fingers, "Skaian, live alone to no Pack but my Dad, kept in relative isolation to protect my identity, with-held from anything like a normal courtship at the demands of my Enlistment. If Dave's sick, it's exactly the fighting that's to blame, but he wasn't sick until he was removed from that fighting exactly, so," John shrugs, meeting your eye. "He probably just needs a return to routine, if Miz Romanov hasn't told you already; and I'm sorry to report that I'm not exactly a part of any of that norm. Not the way I used to be, not for a while."

"I trust my senses," you argue quietly. "If Dave's feeling better than last night, that's good. And I'm not going to -" A laugh scuffs through under your breath, understanding - "Obligate you to stay, either way. The invitation stands, from me to you."

And John is sharp enough to ask, "Mh, why though? The Avengers don't need me, and neither does Dave - not really. What's the point of me dropping everything to join his side?"

And you're not without your own skill in deception, yourself, though you like to consider it a beneficial theater more than a practiced manipulation. You dip your chin, mouth narrowing. The Megs in the dancehalls used to humor you, because you were small and polite and harmless, because you never smelled like the usual Ace, never the salt-fish and seawater of the docks or the musk and char of the factories. 

You only shrug. "I'm not sure what contract your dad has you under in DC, or if it keeps you from the authority of the Caliphate. Maybe you'll never have to leave your current Household; maybe soon the State's draconian stranglehold on social contracting will be abolished." You meet John's souring expression with a smudge of sympathy. "But in the meantime, you have an invitation."

John exhales, and doesn't wait for you to stand, pushing up from the flat of your knee. "You could expend that charity on a Terran Meg, you know. Someone who needs the upwards mobility."

You slide your elbows back on the top stair to prop your sitting lean, tilt your chin up to consider John as he stands, despite how this bares your throat. This, too, is a sort of theater, keeping your level below his. "I can't take a Terran spouse, at least not one who isn't augmented in some way. This lifestyle is not exactly safe."

John tears his eyes away, ears red. "Nnh. I guess so!" He thumbs the side of his nose, cupping his mouth, somehow mortified. 

You clear your throat, right your posture to a more formal sit, study the wave of the clouds outside the wide stairwell window. A lot of truths pass unsaid, and you don't have much else to offer John's inclusion, except that you smell like Dave not just because you're physically involved with him, but because you've always smelled like apples and parchment and sun-warmed linoleum, your Alphahood was always so mellow and you'd always had to fight so hard because of the fact.

"If you find someone," you start, slow, plodding through your thoughts. "Later, or eventually. If you find someone else, you could bring them in. We said the same thing to Dave, and his immediate suggestion was you, but even if he finds someone else, later - they'd be welcome." It's the only thing you'd ever fight to extend to as many Omegans as could survive affiliation; freedom from the State, freedom to choose. You weren't going to turn the Senate down, when you turn 35 and they make you president, because there were quite a few systems that needed abolishing, but for now all you can do is offer a House.

Instead of the relief for the freedom of choice, or even the more socially relevant scorn of such forward-thinking Pack inclusion, John 'bluh's softly under his breath, kicks a lazy scuff at the hallway floorboards. "And what if I never find a partner to Bind me, huh? What if that's not even really something I want?"

You tilt your head back to watch John pacing the hall, your throat on display. "Then you wouldn't be the only one." You sink down another stair, head resting on the hall floor, watching the strip of light under your apartment door, and feel more than hear John approach on soft shuffling steps. "Suppressants are just as legal in New York as they are for Federal workers," you remind, turning your head to watch John watch you. "And even if they weren't, we have a surplus of rogue scientists enlisted in SHIELD. Some of them double as medical doctors, and all of them act under a total, complete, and frankly alarming disregard for the law."

John's nostrils flinch, and he crosses his arms. "I'm only staying for lunch," he argues, and you know that one way or the other, he'll be staying for much longer than that - because you don't smell like the usual Alpha overbearance; and because you really are going to ask John for help as suggested by Agent Egbert, and because John reads of a compulsively generous nature, cursed with all the responsibility of his claim to Betahood, and all.

"I'm only asking you to stay for lunch," you lie. A frown flickers across your chin, and you curl to a sit. "Er, if I did - if I would have," you stand, jog the few steps back up to join John in the dark of the hall. "Had a list, or ever been interested in the Auctions, in, in uh, all of that." You shove your hands in your pockets, benevolent theater. "I would have picked him out for an interview, at least." You measure Dave's height in the air. "Tall enough 'Megs are hard to find, for one."

John's mouth twists, and he pauses at your door, rests his back against it to cross his arms, voice lowered so the people inside might not overhear. "I think you're trying to humor me, Captain."

You drop your arm, caught. "There is such a thing as an Asexual, the era I'm from. But 'Megs had a vote back then, too, so who knows who-all else has been robbed of legitimacy by now."

John's alarm paints itself almost comically across his face. "You think Dave's _asexual?"_ His chest works with a few difficult swallows, then, in the muted strain of a stage-whisper - "I think! Maybe he's just gay??"

You let your smirk traipse just as far as your cheek. "I mean you, John. If you aren't interested in finding anyone; if you'd rather be your own person and focus on your job, that's okay."

John's nose reddens, and he nods a little slower now, swallowing thickly.

"That would be okay with us," you assure. "We don't answer to the State." You serve a hand forward, suggesting John open the door.

"So you really married Dave just to save him from a fit?" John clarifies, unexpectedly impartial, not unlike his father.

"Yeah," you answer, unfazed. The truth was the truth, no use dithering about it. "Among other reasons. It's just my good luck that he's tall, smart, and plays piano. That he's got gams for days, could turn heads in nothing more expensive than cotton, and smokes like a wet brick."

A smile glances the side of John's mouth and you know you've done good enough because he pulls away from your apartment door to prise it open, the both of you stepping through into the warm heat and noise of a cooking lunch. 

**Author's Note:**

>  **This story is a WIP** , which means it's going to go through revisions, edits and changes that might produce new content in post-published chapters. Wait until the WIP tag is removed and the chapter fill is complete, if you'd like to avoid a bit of confusion. :)
> 
>  **Comments are disabled** until the finished publication, but they'll still show in my inbox if you wanna point out a typo or ask what I put in my coffee or w/e (it's kahlua).


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